


The Best Laid Plans

by hope_in_the_dark



Series: Big Plans and Little Additions [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Adam Young is ineffable husbands’ top shipper, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Asexual Relationship, Asexuality Spectrum, Bisexual Crowley (Good Omens), Gen, I tried but his name's just too weird to be human, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots, M/M, Slow Burn, guys sorry Az's name is Ezra again, some light angst but also fluffy stuff, things Ezra is bad at: feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-06-25 14:09:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 64,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19747336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hope_in_the_dark/pseuds/hope_in_the_dark
Summary: Ezra Fell has sworn off romance forever and is perfectly content with his books and his tea and his ugly wardrobe. At least, he is until a handsome stranger hits him with a car.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we go again! I can't get Crowley and Aziraphale out of my mind, and I really don't want to mess with Gaiman and Pratchett's vision for the actual canon universe, and so it's another human AU. Sorry (not really. I like AUs best, anyway). 
> 
> As usual, I have no freakin' clue where this story is going. So yeah. We'll see. I'm not lying when I say that I *think* this is going to be around ten chapters, but I told myself that with "A Certain Kind of Something," and well...
> 
> If you've read anything by me before: welcome back! If you're new: hi!! Nice to meet you. My name's Hope (not in real life, but on here) and I'm super happy that you're giving this a read! I hope you like it. 
> 
> I love kudos and comments, of course, so feel free to leave them if you'd like to!!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don’t own Good Omens or anything else that’s proprietary that might be mentioned in this story. 
> 
> Heads up for language!

Ezra Fell & Co. Books stood proudly on a street corner in Soho, London. It had been there for nearly a decade, but it looked like someone had built it in the late 1900s and then just never got around to changing it. Most people thought it was dingy and anachronistic, and the other shops around it were a bit bothered by the fact that its proprietor never deigned to wash the windows or even sweep off the front stoop. This was Soho, after all; despite its seedy past, the area now was playing host to many upscale shops and restaurants (in addition to being the central location for London’s gay community, which just made everything that much more extravagant), and Ezra Fell & Co. was a blight on that image.

Occasionally, the odd pedestrian saw the shop and decided to brave its decidedly unwelcoming and cluttered interior, and even more occasionally, someone left the shop with a book in hand. The people who entered the shop found it quaint and charming, even if it did need a dusting rather badly, and they found the shopkeep to be polite but oddly standoffish and fiercely protective of the books that he was supposed to be selling.

The proprietor of the shop, one Ezra Fell (he’d added the “& Co.” to the name of his shop because he thought it gave it character, not because there was an actual “& Co.” to speak of), matched his bookshop perfectly. He was always a little rumpled and dressed about half a century out-of-date, and there was a perpetual layer of dust coating his white-blond curls and the lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses. He had a penchant for tartan-patterned things, a nice mug of tea or cocoa, any sort of sweet food, very expensive red wine, and slang that was a few decades older than he was. In short, Ezra was a seventy-year-old English professor trapped in the body of a frumpy thirty-five-year-old bookseller - book collector, really - and he saw no problem with that at all.

For the last five years, Ezra had rarely ventured outside of the four-block radius around his bookshop. He didn’t see any reason to, really. Almost everything he needed - his books, a nice cafe with very excellent tea, a comfortable little flat, and the best bakery in London - lay within that area, and he was a rather Hobbit-like man who enjoyed life’s pleasures best from a familiar place. He’d never learned to drive a car because he hadn’t felt it necessary to do so if he were to stay in one place for the rest of his life, which was what he planned to do. Consequently, whenever the rare occasion arose that required Ezra to actually leave Soho, he rode his bike or took the bus. This was not a problem at all, until one Saturday when it very suddenly was.

The reason Ezra’s decision to ride a bike instead of drive a car had become a problem was because he found himself flying through the air and landing on the blacktop of a tiny side street with his arms stretched out in front of him and his glasses cracked. It took him a moment to register what had happened, but when he did, he sighed. He had, of course, been hit by a car.

“Ouch,” Ezra said to the road. This was an understatement - his arm was throbbing, and his chest ached, and he was feeling a bit dizzy - but it was all his brain could manage to come up with.

The sound of a car door slamming made Ezra jump (and then wince, because _ow_ , his ribs), and Ezra found himself staring at a pair of black suede boots. “Shit.” The voice that had cursed was definitely male, and Ezra tried to push himself up to reassure the man that he was alright, but then he saw the blood on his hands and felt quite woozy, so he closed his eyes. “Oh, fuck. Are you okay, mate?” There was a cracking noise which Ezra recognized as the sound knees make when someone crouches down, but Ezra’s nausea hadn’t subsided enough for him to reopen his eyes or say anything, so he just grunted.

There was a little giggle from behind Ezra. “You said a really bad word, Uncle AJ.” A child, then.

“Shut it, Adam. If you repeat that to your parents, I’m never taking you anywhere ever again.” Even with a snarl in it, the man’s voice was smooth. A warm hand pressed against Ezra’s forehead, and he squirmed a little (and then winced again. Still _ow_ ) before blearily cracking open one eye. There was a relieved sigh from above his head. “Oh, thank fuck. You’re not dead.”

Ezra’s vision was blurry, but he could make out that the man who’d hit him with a car was lean and tan, with perfectly styled dark hair and clothes in varying shades of grey and black. He was also wearing sunglasses. “I think I might be injured,” Ezra managed after a moment. “Do you think you might be kind enough to take me to a hospital?”

“Yes, of course. I’m so sorry.” Ezra extended his hand towards the shady-looking bloke, which made him notice the blood on it again, which made him dizzy again. The guy grabbed Ezra’s hand, smearing the blood around and causing the raw flesh to burn with pain. Because Ezra was essentially the dictionary definition of a wimp, he yelped a little and promptly blacked out.

Ezra came around a little while later in a hospital bed. A nurse was standing at the foot of it, scribbling something on a clipboard, so Ezra cleared his throat. “Erm, hello.”

The nurse - who Ezra could tell was really good-looking, even if he couldn’t see specific facial features without his glasses on - smiled at Ezra and walked up to the side of the bed. “Hi. How’re you feeling?”

“Achy,” Ezra mumbled. The nurse laughed and patted Ezra’s hand, which had been wrapped in white bandages and smelled like antiseptic.

“That makes sense. You had a run-in with a car, and the car won.”

Ezra blinked for a moment, and it all came crashing back. “Oh, yes. That’s right.” He gave the handsome nurse a kind smile. “The, um, man who hit me. Is he still here?”

“Yes. Wouldn’t leave, but we can’t let him back here to see you unless you say so.”

“I’d like to see him, if that’s alright.”

The nurse’s cheerful face turned serious. “Do you want me to call the cops, mate?”

At that, Ezra blanched. “Oh, no! Nothing like that. I just want to thank him for bringing me here.”

“He… he hit you with his car, and you want to thank him?”

Ezra smiled again. “Yes, please. Show him back, would you?” Looking mildly gobsmacked, the nurse headed to the waiting room and returned a few moments later with a dark-haired bloke and a young, curly-haired boy. The boy ran up to Ezra’s bed, grinning.

“Hi. ‘M Adam Young.”

“Ezra Fell. Pleasure to meet you, dear boy.” The kid - Adam - took Ezra’s non-cast-covered hand, which Ezra thought was rather sweet.

There was a cough from the end of the bed. “Ezra, is it? I am _so_ sorry about what happened… I’ll understand if you want to file a report, and of course I’ll pay for any medications and-”

Ezra chuckled a little at how uncomfortable the black-clad bloke seemed. “I’ll let you pay for my medication, but I don’t think the police are necessary, do you, Mister…?”

“Crowley.”

Something clicked in Ezra’s mind. “Crowley? Like… like _those_ Crowleys?” The _those_ to which Ezra was referring were the richest family in London - lawyers, doctors, surgeons, the whole lot of them - and this bloke didn’t seem to match that stereotype. But Crowley nodded, and Ezra felt suddenly a lot more apprehensive about talking to him.

“His mum and dad have loads of money,” Adam supplied helpfully, dropping Ezra’s hand in the interest of pulling out a five pound note from his pocket. “Uncle AJ has a lot, too, but he's just a pr'fessor.”

“Thanks, Adam,” said Crowley drily. “I’m sure Mister Fell here is very concerned about my wealth and occupation.” He turned back to look at Ezra, and even though Ezra’s vision still wasn’t good - his glasses had been broken, he remembered, and he had no idea where they’d got to - he was sure he saw a faint pink blush spread across Crowley’s cheeks. “Anyway. I’m so sorry, again. It was an accident, I swear it.”

Ezra waved his good hand flippantly. “No worries, my dear fellow, none at all.”

There was a grunt and a tiny smile from Crowley, and silence fell as the three of them waited for the nurse to come back. He did, eventually, and he told Ezra that as long as he went easy on his broken ribs (no lifting anything heavy, which wouldn’t be too much of a struggle as Ezra didn’t generally lift anything heavier than his hardcover copy of _Les Miserables_ ) and came back in six weeks to get his cast off, he was free to go. Crowley and Adam trailed him all the way to the car park, which was where Ezra realized that he didn’t know where his bike was.

Almost as though he’d read Ezra’s mind, Adam answered that unspoken question. “Uncle AJ left your bike with a shop owner. It’s a bit banged up, which is so _awesome_. Like, when you fell off, it got all bent up and then you were bleeding everywhere and it was _so cool_ -” He was cut off by a sharp jab in the ribs from Crowley, which Ezra was thankful for. The reminder of the blood was making him queasy again, and he wasn’t overly inclined towards vomiting in front of strangers.

“ _Shut it_ , Adam,” Crowley hissed. “Mister Fell, would you like a lift home?”

It was a kind offer, certainly, and one Ezra hadn’t been expecting. “Yes, alright.” He gave Crowley the cross streets of his shop, and off they went. As soon as Crowley started to drive, it occurred to Ezra that there was _no way in heaven_ he was the first person to be hit by Crowley’s car; the man had a very limited attention span and drove like he had cinder blocks glued to his shoes.

The ride was quiet until the Bentley screeched to a halt in front of Ezra’s bookshop. Ezra hadn’t said a word because he’d had his eyes squeezed shut and was trying to take deep, steadying breaths. Crowley had spent most of the time not looking at the road and fiddling with the vintage cassette player, which was apparently acting up, so he hadn’t said anything to Ezra. Adam was content to observe Ezra and remember the pure awesomeness of his uncle hitting a person with a car (truly, it was the highlight of Adam’s year - he was a sweet kid, sure, but he was also most definitely a sadist).

Ezra was reaching for the door handle when Crowley asked an odd question. “Mister Fell, can we exchange phone numbers? I’d like to check in with you tomorrow to see how you’re holding up.”

“Of course. And it’s Ezra, please - Mister Fell is what my most formal associates call me.” It had been a very long time since anyone had requested Ezra’s number for any reason other than a business one, and while he knew that Crowley wasn’t asking for it for social purposes, his traitorous heart still fluttered a little. Crowley held out his hand expectantly, and Ezra found himself suddenly confused before he remembered that people these days had mobile phones and that he was the only stuck-in-the-past crotchety fool who didn’t. “Oh, I’m sorry. I haven’t got a mobile.”

They were sitting close enough that Ezra could see one of Crowley’s dark eyebrows arch above the rim of his sunglasses. “You don’t have a cell phone?” This was Adam, who was staring at Ezra incredulously from the back seat.

“No. I have a landline in my shop.” Ezra sniffed, and had he had two fully-functioning hands, he would have straightened his bowtie.

Thankfully, Crowley intervened before Adam could harass Ezra anymore. “Number?” Ezra told him, and Crowley entered it into his mobile. “Right. I’ll call tomorrow to make sure you’re alright, and I’ll take your bike to a shop to get it fixed up. Should bring it by in a couple days.”

“Thank you, Crowley.”

A soft “Mmmhmm” was the only reply, so Ezra climbed out of the Bentley with a little wave at Adam and walked into his shop. Sighing, he climbed the stairs to his flat and tugged off his ruined clothes, tossing them into the bin with a grimace before changing into a nearly identical outfit. Outside in a vintage Bentley, Crowley was arguing with his godson (unbeknownst to Ezra, of course).

“You should take Ezra on a date, Uncle AJ. He’s nice and you’re lonely.”

“ _No_ ,” Crowley snapped, and floored the accelerator. “Let’s go to the aquarium.”

Because Adam was an eleven-year-old boy, he forgot immediately that he had been planning on continuing to pester Crowley about his lack of a love life, and he became very interested in the idea of the aquarium. “Oooh, okay! Are there sharks?”

In the small flat above Ezra Fell & Co. Books, a blond-haired man with one arm in a cast was making himself a cup of tea while giving himself a stern talking-to about how he should not get attached to handsome strangers who hit him with a car.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the accident, Crowley checks in on Ezra. Ezra reflects on his past, and we learn why he's so guarded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, gals, and non-binary pals: I am so sorry for the massive angst in this chapter. I wasn't planning on doing this just yet, but it sort of happened anyway, so here we are. Regardless of the sadness, I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to leave comments and kudos - I genuinely love nothing more than hearing from you all. 
> 
> Heads up in this chapter for language.

By the time his landline rang the next day, Ezra had been up for hours. Ezra didn’t actually ever sleep much, which might have seemed strange for someone who enjoyed comfort and warmth as much as he did, but he preferred to be awake to do the actual enjoying of those things. Before Crowley called, Ezra had made himself two cups of cocoa, re-organized his Wilde section, and failed three times at tying his bowtie without the use of his cast-bound arm. He’d eventually settled on an old blue tartan patterned clip-on that he hadn’t touched since university. It had made him a little sad, but he figured that _some_ kind of bowtie was better than no bowtie (anyone with a fashion sense would have disagreed), so he swallowed his pride and put it on.

“ _Ezra_?” Crowley’s voice was thick with sleep, which made Ezra frown at the clock on his wall and wonder if it was broken. It wasn’t, which meant that Crowley really had slept in until eleven in the morning.

“Good morning, Crowley.”

On the other end of the phone, Crowley’s jaw cracked as he yawned. “ _How are you feeling_?”

Ezra was in a substantial amount of pain, actually, but he thought that Crowley would like to hear good news, so he gritted his teeth and lied through them. “Better than I would have expected, my dear. Thank you for calling.”

“ _You’re sure_?” There was hesitation there, and Ezra had the strange feeling that Crowley knew he was lying. Given that Ezra was not in the habit of being untruthful, trying to lie a second time seemed a bit pointless, so he decided to tell an approximation of the truth.

“My ribs hurt quite a bit, I’ll confess.” A sharp intake of breath cut Ezra off for a moment. “Luckily, though, my arm isn’t so bad. And I changed the bandages on my hands this morning, which wasn’t very fun, but at least there wasn’t any blood.”

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” Crowley muttered. “ _God, I feel like such an idiot. Can I… I dunno, can I help_?”

Ezra laughed. “No, no. I’m alright, truly. I’m sure the aches and pains will fade in a few days.” He could practically hear Crowley thinking, so he changed the subject. “How’s your car? I didn’t think to ask.”

“ _It’s fine. Just a few scratches on the front fender, I’ll get them buffed out soon enough_.” There was a rustling sound, which Ezra (correctly) took to mean that Crowley had gotten out of bed. “ _You’re sure I can’t do anything to help_?”

Despite himself, Ezra blushed. “I’m sure. Thank you.”

“ _Right_ ,” said Crowley. “ _Your bike’s in the repair shop, I’ll have it over to you tomorrow_.”

“Good.”

“ _Mmm_.”

After a long pause, Ezra thought it was time they finished this incredibly awkward conversation. “Jolly good, then. Thank you for checking in, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He hung up before Crowley could answer, and then he forced his face to cool down, reminding himself that he had given up on having a love life after Gabriel had left him, and went to make a cup of tea.

Ezra’s personal philosophy on life was that there are very few things that cannot be improved by a good cup of tea and a chocolate scone. So, after making and drinking his tea, he went in search of a chocolate scone. He’d heard the phrase “eating your feelings” from one of the rare few people who bothered to stop into his shop, and he’d misinterpreted it as a positive thing, which is why he was rather cheerfully making his way to the bakery to do just that.

The girl behind the counter had become a sort of friend to Ezra over the past few years for two reasons: because Ezra was a regular and because he was one of those people who are inclined towards asking strangers personal questions. Ezra had learned through quick conversations (sometimes longer ones if the bakery was having a slow day) that her name was Anathema Device and that her uncle owned the bakery. She was twenty-four years old and was engaged to an IT specialist named Newt, and she dabbled a bit in the alternate-medicine sort of stuff. Anathema was always telling Ezra about new herbal remedies and pressing samples of her own elixirs and things into his well-manicured hands - he didn’t try them because they seemed strange and he didn’t like strange things, but he always took them anyway - and she was very passionate about the dangers of trusting big pharmaceutical companies. So, Ezra wasn’t exactly surprised when he walked into the bakery and Anathema’s eyes got very wide and very excited at the sight of his cast.

“Ezra! What have you done to yourself?” she called over the head of the customer at the counter, a woman who seemed to be having trouble getting a pen to work.

“Good morning to you, too, Anathema.” He smiled at her so she would know that he wasn’t _really_ reprimanding her, and she smiled back after handing the other woman a brand-new pen. The receipt was finally signed and handed back across the counter to Anathema, who tucked it away as the woman moved off to the side to wait for her order.

Over the rim of her bright-blue glasses, Anathema shot Ezra a skeptical look. “Really, though, mate. What happened?”

Ezra shrugged, pointing wordlessly to a particularly delicious-looking scone in the display case. “Got hit by a car.”

“ _What_? When?”

“Yesterday,” said Ezra, placing a few pounds on the counter as Anathema heated up his scone in the little toaster oven.

“Y’know, I’ve got some _wonderful_ herbal pills that you should try for the pain - don’t give me that look, Ezra Fell, I’m sure you’re taking some poisonous rubbish that you bought at the chemist’s - and I know these work really well. Newt gets migraines, see, and these help him.” Vaguely, Ezra wondered if the pills were actually the cause of the migraines instead of the solution, but he kept quiet about that and told Anathema that he’d give them a try if she would be so kind as to drop them by the shop later.

He took his scone over to an empty table near the window, and Anathema pulled off her apron and told the other barista to cover for her for a few minutes before joining Ezra at the table. Ezra hummed as he took a large bite, getting melted chocolate on his top lip. “This is lovely today, my dear. Please tell your uncle I said so.”

She grinned at him. “I always do. So, how the hell did you get hit by a car?”

In between bites, Ezra told her the whole story. He left out the part about Crowley being a particularly handsome man (because another thing he knew about Anathema was that she had a very annoying tendency to try and set him up with any decent-looking fellow she came across, no matter how many times Ezra told her not to), but of course he couldn’t keep himself from blushing a little. Anathema, ever vigilant and observant, noticed this right away.

“He’s a bit of alright then, is he?” She waggled her dark eyebrows and Ezra flushed a darker shade of pink.

“Might be.” Ezra found his good hand trapped quite firmly between Anathema’s palm and the wood of the table, and she was gaping at him.

“Ask him out, you daft man!”

Ezra shook his head and wrestled his hand out from under hers, patting her gently on the forearm when he did so. “No, dear girl. You know that I don’t… fraternize-” Anathema rolled her dark eyes at that, but Ezra ignored her, “-anymore. Not after what happened with Gabriel.”

“Gabriel was a wanker, Ezra. Not all men are like that.” Her voice was soft yet firm, but Ezra was too tired and achy to go through this same discussion with her again, so he wiped his mouth with a napkin and fixed her with a stern stare.

“I know. But I loved him, dear - you know this, we’ve talked about it - and I don’t want to get hurt like that again. I’m fine on my own, really. I’ve gotten used to it.”

Anathema sighed and fiddled with a sugar packet. “I know you have. The thing is, though: you shouldn’t _have_ to be fine with it. Gabriel was the worst kind of man - he told you that he was going to marry you, and then he cheated on you for six months before leaving you to marry that other bloke. He was _rubbish_ , Ezra, but that doesn’t mean you should be alone.” Ezra quirked an eyebrow at her and picked at some crumbs of the scone he’d finished. “Besides, that whole Gabriel business was years ago. Isn’t it time to give it a go again? I’m sure there are loads of young men who’d love to be with you.”

“No, dear.” Ezra flapped his hand. “Besides, I don’t think any young man would like to go steady with me - I’m crowding forty, and I’ve got more baggage than a British Airways flight full of American tourists.” It didn’t take a genius to know that Ezra had made up his mind, and anyone who knew him as well as Anathema had come to was aware that once he’d done so, nothing short of a miracle could change it.

“Ezra,” Anathema sighed, and she stood and picked up his plate and napkin, walking back behind the counter. “Nobody says ‘go steady’ anymore. They haven’t since before either of us were born.”

Rolling his blue eyes affectionately, Ezra gave her a friendly peck on the cheek as he headed for the door. “Goodbye, my dear.”

The remainder of the day was fairly uneventful, which was exactly how Ezra liked it. He spent it dusting the surface of the checkout-counter, which only needed dusting because it hadn’t had anything set on it in weeks. It was the only surface in the shop that Ezra ever bothered to clean, although he wasn’t entirely sure why he cleaned it at all. After all, it wasn’t as though he actually wanted someone to buy one of his books (perish the thought!) until it was absolutely necessary to make a sale in order to keep the shop open. After he finished his dusting, Ezra made himself a cocoa and topped it with whipped cream and marshmallows, settling into a well-worn couch in his back room to read a new book on whales that he’d acquired. He lost himself in the book for a few hours until he was interrupted by someone pounding on his front door.

This person was, of course, Anathema. Ezra was mildly horrified when he realized that he’d been hoping it might by Crowley dropping by to check on him, so he mentally reprimanded himself for being such a fool as Anathema dug through her purse for the pills she’d brought for him. She pressed a glass bottle of green pills into Ezra’s hand, giving him instructions on how to take them and a kiss on the cheek. When she’d gone, Ezra placed the bottle gently beside the massive collection of other Anathema-given remedies that was accumulating in an empty cupboard and went off in search of more paracetamol. His ribs were truly aching, so he decided to retire to bed earlier than usual and try to get some rest.

Sleep didn’t come easily to Ezra that night. He might not have preferred to spend his time sleeping, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be restless when he did close his eyes for the night. As anyone who has regular nightmares can attest to, being woken up repeatedly by the loudness of one’s own thoughts is a truly terrible experience, and Ezra hated it.

It was really no great surprise, then, when Ezra woke at his normal hour quite decidedly not on the right side of the bed. He grumbled his way through his first cup of tea and two slices of toast, working himself increasingly into an irritated, sleep-deprived ball of stress. “Stupid bleeding car, stupid bleeding Crowley, stupid bleeding _broken arm_!” He glared at the shattered mug at his feet, which had fallen from the counter when he lost his grip on its handle, and sighed a little when it didn’t magically fix itself. He was on his knees a few minutes later, wiping up the spilled tea and picking up shards of ceramic, when Crowley’s Bentley squealed to a stop outside of his shop.

Ezra was drawn downstairs and away from the now-cleaned-up tea tragedy by a firm thumping on the door of his shop. “We’re closed,” he called, praying that whoever it was would just go away and leave him in peace.

“Erm, I have your bike.” The sound of Crowley’s smooth voice was muffled by the wood, but it still made Ezra shiver involuntarily (which in turn made Ezra feel like slapping himself). He hurried over to the door and unlocked it, pulling it open just enough that he could stick his head and shoulders out through the crack.

“Hello, Crowley.” Ezra did his level best to stick a friendly smile on his face.

“Hey,” said Crowley. It was a very strange picture; Crowley’s long, elegant fingers were wrapped around the handlebars of a bike that hadn’t had its grips changed in a decade or more, and the bike itself looked dingy and shabby next to the impeccably well-fitting black suit that Crowley was wearing. The sight of that suit made Ezra’s heart jump a little inside of his chest, which made the pain in his ribs momentarily worse, so he winced. This, as it turned out, caused Crowley to fly into a frenzy. “Oi! You okay there, Ezra?” One of those beautiful hands had landed on Ezra’s scratchy-jumper-clad shoulder, and Ezra pulled away before he did something stupid, like invite Crowley in for a drink.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine.” He gave Crowley another bright smile and reached for the bike, which Crowley passed over to him. If their fingers brushed together, Ezra was sure he didn’t notice. “Thank you for bringing this back.”

“Of course.”

There was a strange, tense silence. Ezra was trying not to stare at Crowley’s very excellent cheekbones, so he looked over Crowley’s shoulder at the passing traffic and managed to keep his cool. Crowley was fidgeting a little, reaching up every few seconds to brush a strand of hair out of his eyes or adjust his sunglasses, and the silence stretched on.

By some stroke of ill-intentioned fate, both men spoke at the same time. Ezra coughed and muttered “Right, then. Thank you, my dear,” at the same time that Crowley blurted “Would you like to get a drink with me sometime?”

Ezra’s jaw very nearly collided with his front stoop. “Would I… what?”

Crowley shifted his weight and scratched the back of his neck. “I asked if you might like to get a drink with me sometime.”

Every bone in Ezra’s body was screaming for him to say yes. His heart was pounding against his ribcage, but he barely felt the throbbing of his broken rib. He wanted to say yes, and he had opened his mouth to do so when the memories of Gabriel burned through his mind.

It was five years since the incident, almost exactly to the day. He’d dropped by Gabriel’s flat on a whim one night, bearing pasta and a very nice bottle of his favorite zinfandel. They were going to discuss ring shopping - Gabriel had been a very modern sort of bloke, and he’d thought that buying rings was a thing that couples should do together - and as Ezra had finally warmed to the idea that he wouldn’t be getting a real proposal, he was very excited about it. At least, he’d been excited until he saw an unfamiliar leather jacket lying in a crumpled heap on the floor next to one of Gabriel’s nicest button-downs. Silently, Ezra had put the dinner and the wine on the kitchen table and crept toward the bedroom. What he’d heard had been evidence enough, so he’d turned on his heel and just _ran_. It wasn’t until he’d gotten back to the bookshop that he realized he’d left the food and wine, which meant that Gabriel would know he had been there.

Sure enough, not even fifteen minutes later, the tell-tale sound of a key turning in the lock had drawn Ezra out of his confused panic. Gabriel had just stood there, right in the doorway, his sandy-blond hair mussed and fuzzy. That had made Ezra feel sick, seeing Gabriel like that. Gabriel was always insistent on looking perfect - he never had a hair out of place, and lint seemed to be afraid to settle on his clothes - but that night he’d been a mess. His shirt wasn’t even fully buttoned, and he hadn’t bothered to tie his shoes. He’d come over to Ezra’s shop looking like _that_ and had done nothing, said nothing, and just stared.

“Gabriel-”

“I love him.” That was what did it, really. Those three words had pierced Ezra’s soul like daggers, and he had felt like everything that made him _him_ was gone, drained out through those three imaginary holes in his chest.

“How long?” Ezra’s voice was shaking so badly that even now, he couldn’t believe that he’d managed to form words.

Gabriel had shuddered a little at that. “You don’t want to know, Ez.” Only Gabriel had ever called him that. No one else had been allowed, and no one would ever be allowed to again.

“Tell me.”

A sigh. “Six months.”

The empty cavity in Ezra’s chest where his soul had been filled with red-hot anger in an instant. “Get out,” Ezra spat. “Get.. get the _fuck_ out.” If he’d wanted to, Ezra could probably count the number of times he’d said that word on one hand. Really, he could count it on one finger. He hadn’t said it before that night and he hadn’t said it since, but in the moment it had seemed right.

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel had tried to say, but Ezra wouldn’t let him get the words out. He’d slammed the door in Gabriel’s face and slumped down against the wall, shaking and crying and grieving.  
The weeks after that night had been blurry for Ezra. He’d been drunk for most of those days - something that he was very much not in the habit of - and consequently had only a few coherent memories. One of them was Gabriel showing up at the shop again to collect his things from Ezra’s flat upstairs and leaving without so much as a backwards glance or an apology. Ezra remembered screaming into his pillow after that. Eventually, though, Ezra had pulled himself together and re-opened his shop. He completely stopped drinking for a little while, and he buried himself in finding new books to buy and sell (he had probably sold more books during the months following the incident than he had in all the previous years of being in operation).

One morning, Ezra had walked to the bakery and was reading a newspaper as he enjoyed a pumpkin scone when he saw something that made his blood turn to ice. It was a congratulatory marriage announcement, and Gabriel’s handsome face had been grinning up at him from the page. Anathema, who was just getting to know Ezra at that time, had come over and Ezra had cried into her shoulder and told her everything. She’d comforted him until he was composed enough to walk home. When he got back, Ezra got rid of everything that reminded him of Gabriel, and when he’d finished that, he had looked himself in the eye in his bathroom mirror and sworn that he would never give his heart to anyone ever again. He’d kept that promise ever since.

“Ezra?” The sound of Crowley’s silky voice shook Ezra out of his memories.

“Sorry,” Ezra said. “I… can’t go for a drink with you, my dear. I appreciate the offer, but I’ve got a bad history, and-”

“It’s okay. You can just say that you don’t want to go. I’ve been rejected before, Ezra, I know how it goes.” Crowley’s face was red beneath his sunglasses, and a small stiff smile settled on his thin lips. “Just thought I would ask.”

 _It’s not that I don’t want to_ , Ezra felt like screaming. _I want to. I do. But I can’t._ He didn’t say that, though. What he said was “I’m sorry. Thank you for bringing this back, and for checking in on me.”

“Mmm,” grunted Crowley, staring at the pavement beneath his leather shoes. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Right.” With another kind smile, Ezra pulled his bike into the shop and closed the door, locking it.

After a few moments, Ezra heard Crowley mutter something that sounded like “shit, fuck, dammit,” and then Crowley’s footsteps faded away and the low rumble of his Bentley started up.

Ezra propped his bike up against a book case in the back room and sank down onto his couch. He made a very valiant effort not to cry, of course, because he thought it would be stupid to cry over something that he imposed upon himself. Unfortunately, his tear ducts didn’t agree, and so he shed silent tears that splashed against the lenses of his glasses and made everything in the world seem a little less clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, I realized I forgot to link jellybe’s very cute art for this chapter, so here you guys go! https://welfchen.tumblr.com/post/186216080661/the-best-laid-plans
> 
> If anyone else feels so inclined to do art based on this fic, please leave a link in a comment and I’ll add it to a note so others can enjoy! You all are incredible, thank you SO MUCH.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quite a while goes by before Ezra and Crowley cross paths again, but they finally do. Adam and Anathema have some *thoughts* about Ezra and Crowley, of course, and life just sort of... gets on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took me so long to get up! I hope you guys like it. Comments and kudos are always appreciated, of course! 
> 
> To those of you who're taking the time to read this: You all have my undying love and affection. Seriously. The comments I've been getting have been so encouraging, so thank you so much!
> 
> I don't think there's actually any language in this chapter (a LANDMARK occasion, I know), but if there is and I missed it, let me know.

Ezra didn’t see Crowley for almost nine months. During that time, he definitely did not think about Crowley at all. Well, maybe he did, but only a few times (a week). He found this strange because he’d been asked on dates more than a handful of times since the incident with Gabriel - it would have been nearly impossible for him not to get the occasional offer, living where he lived and being, well, himself - but none of the men he’d rejected before had stuck with him for very long. Sure, there were fleeting moments of regret now and again, times when he wished he would have taken that handsome young chap out for dinner just so that he could share a meal with someone other than Anathema and Newt, but for the most part, he forced himself to forget those men and continued being content with his solo lifestyle.

For some inexplicable reason, though, Ezra’s Judas of a brain was not letting go of the whole Crowley business. The more rational portions of Ezra’s mind told him repeatedly that of all of the men who’d asked him for a drink (or more) in the past nearly six years, Crowley was the least likely candidate for sticking around in Ezra’s heart like gum on the bottom of a shoe. They’d met when Crowley had _hit Ezra with a car_ , not in some normal way like at a cafe or in the bookshop. Also, Crowley seemed dangerous. He was dark, mysterious, and drove like a maniac, and he had a heart-melting smile and a badass swagger to his walk. If Ezra had wanted to dip his toes into the pool of relationships again - something he told himself vehemently that he would _not_ do, no thank you - Crowley would not have been the person to do it with, anyway. The man practically smelled like heartbreak.

Still, some small part of Ezra’s taped-up and patched-together soul wondered what would have happened if he’d said yes. Ezra deeply despised that part of himself and did his best to ignore it. He’s been doing fairly well at crushing down those thoughts until the day in April when a terribly familiar curly-haired boy sat down next to him on a bench in St. James’s Park.

Ezra frequented St. James’s because he was, at heart, a crotchety old man and found quite a lot of joy in simple things intended for people far older than him. One of those things was feeding the ducks, which is what he was doing when Adam showed up.

“Hi, Ezra,” Adam chirped, making Ezra nearly jump out of his skin and drop the last stale bread crust at the feet of a mallard who stole it and walked off before Ezra could get it back.

“Adam!” Ezra gave the boy a smile and shook his head apologetically at the rest of the ducks who had been waiting for a few crumbs. They looked at him with as much malice as ducks could possibly muster, and then they turned around and walked down to the next bench to harass a suspicious-looking man in a trenchcoat.

Adam was licking a chocolate ice cream cone that was slowly dribbling down onto his freckled hands. “Uncle AJ said I shouldn’t bother you, but he got distracted, so I thought I’d come over anyway.” Ezra’s heart gave a traitorous little flutter at the mention of Crowley, but he managed to school his face into one of mild interest instead of ecstatic joy.

“You ought to listen to your uncle, Adam.”

“He’s not _really_ my uncle,” Adam said, licking a smear of melted ice cream off of his hand. “He’s my godfather, but Mum said it’s okay for me to call him ‘uncle.’ He’s Mum’s cousin, y’know, and he and Mum got on when they were little, and he don’t have kids himself, so Mum made him my godfather.” He grinned at Ezra with chocolate-rimmed lips and went back to his ice cream.

“What are you doing here today, dear boy?” It was clear that Adam had made up his mind about staying and talking to Ezra, so Ezra obliged him.

“Me and Mum and Dad don’t live in London, see. So Uncle AJ comes and gets me on weekends sometimes and brings me around to show me things. We saw the Palace today.”

“Oh,” Ezra said. “How did you find it?”

“Bit rubbish.” Adam crinkled his nose, and Ezra couldn’t stop himself from chuckling a little. “Tried to make the guards laugh, but they just stood there.”

Ezra nodded, brushing crumbs off of his cream-colored trousers. “They do that.”

“Isn’t fair. ‘S boring, do they know that?” Crunching on the last of his cone, Adam wiped his mouth with the back of his (equally sticky) hand, which mostly just made a bigger mess than the one that had already been there.

It was at that moment that Ezra was spared from having to give some sort of token response like “Yes, I’m sure they do,” by the arrival of Crowley. Ezra cursed himself for it, but his heart rate picked up a little.

“I thought I told you not to bother Ezra, you little demon.” That seemed a bit harsh to Ezra, but Adam giggled, so he figured it must be an inside joke.

“I’m not a demon! You said I was the Antichrist.” Adam jabbed Crowley in the ribs with an ice-cream covered finger (and Ezra tried his best to not notice the tight red t-shirt that Crowley had tucked into a pair of even tighter distressed black jeans).

True to Ezra’s memory, Crowley was wearing sunglasses, so his eye roll was hidden from view. His upper lip curled into an almost imperceptible smile, though, and Adam giggled again. “Yes, you’re right. How could I have forgotten? Adam the Antichrist.” This set Adam off into peals of laughter, which gave Ezra an opening to say something to Crowley.

“Antichrist?” Ezra quirked an eyebrow. In hindsight, Ezra rather wished he’d said something along the lines of _“Hello, how are you?”_ but there was nothing that could be done about it, so he just pretended that was a perfectly normal way to start a conversation with the man you’d turned down and then been thinking about for months.

Crowley pulled a black handkerchief out of his back pocket and handed it to Adam, motioning for the boy to wipe off his messy face. “Yeah. I took him to a faculty art show at my university once, and one of my colleagues had painted a portrait of an imaginary young Antichrist. It looked _exactly_ like Adam, so I told him that he looked like the Antichrist and it just sort of…” Crowley flipped one of his long-fingered hands back and forth. “... stuck, I guess. His parents don’t mind anymore, and he thinks it’s funny.”

“You’re an artist, then?” Next to Ezra on the bench, Adam snorted.

“Uncle AJ is awful at art, Ezra.” The kid handed the (now disgustingly sticky) handkerchief back to Crowley, who tucked it back into his pocket with a shrug. “I asked him to draw me s’mthing one time, and he couldn’t do it at all.”

Ezra was confused. “So the art show was just… what? Free to everyone?”

“Yeah.” Crowley finally sat down on the bench on the other side of Adam, throwing his arm across the back of the bench and kicking his long legs out in front of him. “It was, and my girlfriend at the time was in the art department, so…” He shrugged again. “We went.” Adam snickered a little bit at the mention of Crowley’s love life, but Crowley and Ezra both pretended not to notice that.

“Ah,” said Ezra. “What do you teach, then?”

“Astronomy.”

“Really?” This was a surprise. Crowley didn’t dress like a science professor _at all_. He barely dressed like a professor of any sort, for that matter, but with a head tilt and a squint one could maybe picture him as an edgy art or music teacher.

Adam leaned over and put his curly head on Crowley’s shoulder, which Ezra thought was rather a nice show of affection because pre-teenage boys typically shy away from tender moments. “He likes stars, Ezra. Talks about ‘em all the time. Tells me stories ‘n stuff, it’s really cool. Not as cool as like, sharks and snakes and stuff, but pretty cool anyway.” Ezra found himself quite suddenly staring into Adam’s brown eyes, which had gone wide and excited with the memories of Crowley’s star stories. “Didja know that the whole universe started ‘cause there was a huge explosion, Ezra? Loads of space dust and fire and things.”

“I did, in fact.” Ezra glanced up at Crowley, who was smiling softly down at Adam, and his heart skipped a beat. “I’ve read about it - people call it the Big Bang, did Crowley tell you that?”

“Yep,” said Adam. “I think that’s a bit stupid. Uncle AJ calls it ‘the explosion at the beginning of everything’ and I like that better.”

Crowley grunted fondly. “That’s right.” There was a pause, and Ezra met Crowley’s eyes (or rather, looked at his sunglasses) for a moment, and a small smile passed between them. Then Crowley slapped his hands on his thighs and nudged Adam off of his shoulder. “Come on, mate. Time to get back.”

Ezra hadn’t been a twelve-year-old boy in over a quarter of a century, but he still recognized the pouty-lip-and-puppy-dog-eyes look on Adam’s face as one that he himself had used a time or two in his youth. “Do we have to?”

“Yes. Come on, say goodbye to Ezra.”

Adam scrunched his nose up and twisted to face Ezra again. “Mum’s making lasagna. I _hate_ lasagna.”

Crowley snorted at that and Ezra laughed a little. “I’m sure it’ll be alright. Goodbye, Adam.”

“Bye.” When Crowley stood up, so did Adam, and the two started walking away. Sighing, Ezra stared at the duck pond and was wondering which cosmic forces had been so cruel as to being him face-to-face with Crowley again when a throat cleared behind him. He spun around and found himself looking at Crowley’s t-shirt.

“Hey, erm, I didn’t want to leave again on such awkward terms. Not after… well, not after last time.” Crowley coughed a little and pulled on his earlobe, doing his level best to seem cool and nonchalant. “I just thought you seemed like a good bloke, that’s all. Didn’t mean to overstep my bounds or anything like that.”

“You didn’t,” said Ezra kindly, resisting the urge to reach for Crowley’s hand. “It’s not you, my dear, I promise. I just have a... let’s call it a very poor relationship history, and I’m not looking for anything at the moment.” _Or ever,_ he added inside his head, more to convince himself than for any other reason.

“Right,” said Crowley, shoving his hands into his pockets and suddenly becoming the picture of suave and casual. “Good. See you around, Ezra.” As Crowley walked away again, grabbing Adam by the elbow and steering him towards the car park, Ezra did something impulsive (which was rare, because he did very few things without giving them a good measure of thought first).

“Crowley?” He stood up and adjusted his waistcoat. “Do you think… do you think we might be friends?”

One of Crowley’s perfectly-shaped eyebrows crawled up above his sunglasses. “Eh?”

Ezra blushed. “I just thought we could be friends. Even if we can’t - oh, you know what, forget it. Nothing to worry about.” Crowley didn’t say anything right away; he just fidgeted a little and kicked at the dirt on the path with the toe of his shoe.

Adam’s high-pitched giggle broke the silence that had settled uncomfortably in the air. “He wants to be your friend, Ezra, he’s said so.”

“Shut it, Adam,” Crowley hissed. If Ezra wasn’t mistaken, there was even a slight pink tinge to Crowley’s high cheekbones. “Yes, Ezra. I’d like to be friends. ”

“Oh,” Ezra breathed. “Good. Yes, good.”

“Sorry for the hesitation, I just figured you wouldn’t want- I guess I thought- _bollocks_ , never mind. Yes, let’s be friends.”

There was an exasperated sigh, and Adam rolled his eyes. “You two are rubbish at talking, d’you know that?” Both men turned a shade pinker than they had been, and there were a couple awkward waves and quick goodbyes before Crowley and Adam turned to leave (for the third time in ten minutes). This time, they actually made it to the car, and Crowley took Adam home. If he spent the ride out of London pointedly ignoring the teasing taunts coming from the boy in the passenger seat, that was his business.

Ezra enjoyed his walk back from the park quite a lot more than he’d enjoyed the walk there. Crowley had agreed to be his friend, and that was very good because Ezra had found himself short of friends over the past few years. Barring Anathema and one bookseller in Oxford with whom he was pen pals, Ezra didn’t have too many real friends to speak of.

As he walked, he started thinking about how he would go about being friends with Crowley. Maybe Ezra could show him the shop, possibly lend him a book or two about astronomy and maybe even share one of his better bottles of wine. That was a friendly thing, right? Perhaps Crowley would take him to the university, and he could sit in on a lecture or two (this was Ezra’s idea of an exciting friendly outing - it wouldn’t have been most people’s, but you can’t fault the man for his love of learning). Mostly, though, Ezra was ecstatic about the idea of having someone to do things with. Someone to share his best alcohol with, someone to talk to at meal times, someone to just… have around.

It didn’t occur to Ezra right away that Crowley might have other friends with which he’d rather be spending his time, but when it did, he became much less excited and much more nervous. He’d planned on calling Crowley the next day, but the confidence he’d had to do so vanished into thin air as soon as he realized that Crowley was the sort of bloke who had too many friends and not enough time in the day to spend with them.

Ezra was thinking about all of this while he was in bed, soft cotton sheets tucked around him and ceiling fan clicking softly overhead. As he lay there, staring at a half-finished cold cup of tea on his bedside table, a paradoxical thing happened. For the first time since he’d resigned himself to a life of living alone, the bed felt very large and very empty. He’d gotten used to being alone, but somehow, making a friend revealed the absence of any significant source of love in his life, and this made him feel well and truly _lonely_. Ezra hated himself for feeling that way, and he flicked off his bedside lamp with a huff, burrowing down beneath the covers and trying to will away the aching feeling in his chest.

The next day came and went without Ezra picking up the phone. He busied himself with doing inventory and placing a call to a buyer in Liverpool, feeling a little better once he had talked that nice woman out of buying his first-edition _Sense and Sensibility_. He made tea and drank it alone, closed his shop early, and rearranged his collection of bowties before retiring to bed early. One corner of Ezra’s mind was berating him for not calling Crowley, but another was making the quite excellent point that Crowley hadn’t called _him_ either. As he drifted off to sleep, he wasn’t sure whether that thought made him feel more relieved or heartbroken.

It was only two days later that Ezra found himself in need of a scone and a chat, so he made his way to the bakery. As usual, Anathema warmed him a scone and joined him at a table, asking him all sorts of intrusive personal questions. Finally, the topic of Crowley came up (because Ezra wanted it to; he’d said “So I saw Crowley this week at the park” simply because he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer) and Anathema set about scolding him for being daft.

“... you could just pick up the phone, Ezra! It’s been what, three days? That’s a perfectly friendly amount of time. Call the bloody man, mate, he’s probably expecting it.” She’d been going on about Ezra’s poor decision-making skills for close to five minutes, during which time Ezra had done an excessive amount of sighing and eye-rolling and nibbling on his scone.

“He hasn’t called, either, though. I’d rather thought he would have, by now.”

Anathema glared at him. “You’re the one who rejected him when he asked you on a date - I still haven’t forgiven you for that, by the way, you’re so _stupid_ \- and then _you_ proposed being friends! He probably thinks you’ve changed your mind and don’t want to talk to him or something.”

“It’s only been a few days.” Ezra took an especially prim bite of scone. “I’m sure he’s not worried in the least, dear.”

“But you want to see him, right? Just to have a friend who’s not twenty-four and a barista?” Anathema wiggled her eyebrows at Ezra, and he nodded. She made a triumphant humming noise in the back of her throat, and he rolled his eyes at her again.

“Really, dear girl, that's not it at all. I quite enjoy your company." While this was true, what Anathema had said was as well. Ezra shifted in his seat and flicked a scone crumb across the table. "I guess what's worrying me is that I don’t know if _he_ wants to see _me_.” It was strange, feeling this apprehensive, and Ezra didn’t like the feeling much at all. He was half-hoping for things to just go back to the way they had been before Crowley, all comfortable and routine and normal, but a (very small and very timid) part of him was rejoicing at the thought that he might get to be a little more spontaneous.

A whistle from Anathema’s uncle drew their attention elsewhere, and Anathema sighed, placing her hand on Ezra’s. “I have to go back to work, you idiot. _Call him_.” She kissed him gently on the cheek, and he finished the last bite of his scone thoughtfully.

Three hours later, he was staring at his phone. He’d had the good sense to write down Crowley’s phone number back when the car accident had happened, and so he was just switching his gaze between the numbers he’d scrawled on an old receipt - which he thankfully hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw away, even all these months later - and the buttons on his wall-mounted phone. Finally, after nearly thirty minutes of dithering about and making excuses, Ezra punched in Crowley’s mobile number with shaky fingers and waited.

“ _Hello_?” The sound of Crowley’s smooth voice made Ezra’s breath catch in his throat.

“Hello, my dear, I was wondering if you might like to go to lunch tomorrow?” It was all one sentence with barely any space between the words, and Ezra worried for a moment that he’d said it too quickly and Crowley hadn’t been able to understand.

“ _Ezr_ a?”

His face flushed red. “Yes, sorry. I… kept your number from back when you hit me with your car, you see, and I, erm, was planning to go to lunch tomorrow and thought you might like to join me.”

“ _Sure_ ,” Crowley drawled. “ _Where_?”

They decided on sushi. Crowley had a class until half noon, so they would meet there at one. Ezra couldn’t stop himself from smiling a little into the phone when Crowley repeated the address of the sushi restaurant back to him, and he said goodnight as a strange tingly feeling made its way through his body.

When Ezra dreamed that night, it was of tan slender hands and a bright smile tucked between delicate lips. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on one's perspective), he didn't remember that in the morning.

In a sparsely-decorated flat in Mayfair, a rather skinny dark-haired man was grinning stupidly at the stack of exams that he was supposed to be grading. It seemed to him that a friendship was one of the best possible outcomes of running over another human being with one’s car, even if it took a very awkward date rejection to get there. 

As he returned his focus to the exams, Crowley reminded himself very forcefully that normal people do not flirt with their friends. This was a necessary reminder because Crowley was the sort of man who flirted with anyone and everyone all the time, with mostly positive results. It didn’t occur to him that never once in his few interactions with Ezra had he actually been his normal flirtatious self; in fact, he’d been more of a bumbling idiot than anything else. Had he thought about it, it would have struck him as strange, but Crowley wasn’t really the type to think deeply about that sort of thing.

He also didn’t usually have dreams, but that night, Ezra’s laugh echoed in his head.


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They go to sushi, and Ezra is a total idiot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, lovelies! I am SO sorry that this has taken forever-and-a-day to get posted (it hasn't really been that long, I know, but two and a half days is an unprecedented length of time for me), but I had some stuff to deal with and then this chapter decided to be a little brat. But here we are, I suppose - I'm maybe not entirely happy with it, but life isn't fair. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it! Hugs and love to all of you, new readers and established fans (cannot believe that's a thing. Y'all are bloody amazing) alike! 
> 
> Heads up in this chapter for nothing except Ezra being a pining idiot. That, I think, deserves its own warning, do you agree?

Crowley was late, and Ezra was panicking. It was nearly a quarter-past one, and the Bentley and its owner were nowhere to be found. Given that Ezra believed that being on time means one is late, he’d been sitting at his favorite booth in the sushi restaurant for twenty minutes, and the absence of a certain dark-haired astronomy professor was making his blood pressure dangerously high. He was acutely aware of the pitying glances he was getting from the people sitting around him (one woman in particular was making sad puppy eyes at him over her salmon hand roll), and he was on the verge of getting up and going home when Crowley’s slender form slid into the booth across the table.

“Oh! I, erm, thought you might not be coming.” Ezra pushed his glasses up his nose and attempted a small smile, hoping that it looked less nervous than he felt.

“Got held up. Student had a question after class.” As always, Crowley’s eyes were covered by his dark glasses, but there was a slight head-nod that Ezra interpreted as a reassuring gesture.

A slightly awkward silence hung over the table as they both looked over the menu. Ezra wasn’t really sure why he did that - he’d been to this restaurant dozens of times before, and he always ordered the same thing - but for some reason it felt like the thing to do. Crowley was making confused-sounding grunts, and he was tilting his handsome face at increasingly odd angles as though he were trying to read the menu upside down, and a truly tragic thought occurred to Ezra.

“Crowley,” Ezra began slowly, peeking at his friend over the top of his menu. “Do you know what you want?”

Crowley grunted. “I haven’t got the faintest idea what half of this stuff is, to be honest. I’ve never actually had sushi before.” And just like that, Ezra’s worst fears were realized, and he couldn’t stop his face from morphing into a scandalized expression.

“ _Never_?” It seemed impossible that any person could live well into adulthood without trying sushi, and Ezra was trying not to faint from the shock of discovering that not only was there a human being who had managed that feat but that _he_ , Ezra Fell, actually knew such a person.

“Didn’t ever see the appeal,” muttered Crowley, trailing a finger down the list of possible sushi rolls. “Don’t usually go in for raw fish.”

“It’s _nice_ ,” Ezra insisted. “You dip it in soy sauce.”

“I know _what_ sushi is, Ezra. I’ve just never been inclined to try it.”

Begrudgingly, Ezra handed over the other menu, which was bound in faux black leather and had the name of the sushi place stamped on it in silver lettering. He’d never looked at it in his life, but every sushi restaurant seemed to have one of them: a menu full of not-sushi for people (like Crowley) who inexplicably go to sushi restaurants without planning to actually eat sushi. “There’s other stuff in here,” Ezra said, doing his best to suppress a sigh.

To Ezra’s surprise, Crowley laughed. “That’s very big of you.” The sarcasm practically dripped off of the words, and Ezra felt a bit embarrassed that he’d been so obvious about his disdain for non-sushi-eating-sushi-restaurant-diners.

“Really, Crowley,” Ezra said kindly, patting Crowley’s hand lightly. “You get whatever you want. Sorry for being… snobbish, I think might be the best word.”

“No, I agreed to come to lunch here because you obviously like it so much, so I figured I’d give it a try.” One of Crowley’s beautiful-but-brief smiles caught Ezra’s eye, and he couldn’t stop his cheeks from pinking up a little. “You can order for us, and if I don’t like it, I’ll get something else.”

Never one to turn down the opportunity to make food-related decisions for other people, Ezra did as Crowley asked. He kept the order a bit more tame than he usually would have, sticking with classic rolls instead of the specialties he usually got (the ones with all the stuff on top that are really tricky to eat). After the waitress had gone away, Ezra sipped his ice water and struggled to come up with something interesting to ask Crowley. There was a lot he wanted to know, of course, but something about Crowley’s general nonchalance and slick appearance made it difficult for Ezra to think of anything that didn’t sound trite and stupid.

Finally, Ezra just threw all of his bad question ideas out of the proverbial window and went with the first thing that came to mind, which ended up being the most boring question in the world: “So, you like astronomy?”

“Among other things, yes.” The corner of Crowley’s mouth twitched a little, and Ezra got the distinct impression that his friend was making a concerted effort not to laugh. “I’ve only been a professor of it for six years or so, but I’ve always loved the night sky.”

“Where do you teach?”

“University College London.”

“Ah,” said Ezra. “Good school.” Crowley just grunted and took a long drink of water, and Ezra definitely did not look at his lips. “How’d you, erm, discover your love for the stars?”

As soon as that question left Ezra’s mouth, Crowley was no longer slouched down in the booth; he was leaning halfway over the table, fingers steepled together, already talking. “I had a telescope when I was a boy, see, and I would go out with my dad to look at the stars when it was clear enough for it. My mum started buying me star maps and things, and I just couldn’t get enough. I started going to the library - I never did that before the stars - and found all of the stories about the constellations, and I would tell them to my parents and my cousins and anyone who would listen until they got sick of me talking about the ‘bloody stars out in bloody outer space.’ Then when I got a bit older, one of my physics teachers in secondary school taught me about the expansion of the universe and the way light travels and things like that, and I sort of just-” Crowley, who was by this point slightly out of breath, waved his hand in some sort of vague indecipherable gesture, “-fell in love with it, really. Never looked back.”

Somewhere in the back of Ezra’s mind, two thoughts registered simultaneously: that Crowley really _did_ have a lovely voice, didn’t he, and that Crowley talking about something he loved was really quite something and he should preferably never stop talking like that. Ezra smashed those too-romantic thoughts with an imaginary mental hammer and returned to the real world, where Crowley was still panting a little and was looking at him expectantly.

“I know what you mean,” Ezra said. “I’ve loved books since I could read them - maybe even before that, you know, I haven’t a clue - so I knew that I just _had_ to do something with that when I got older. And now I have a bookshop, and I repair books as well because I don’t sell nearly enough of my darlings to keep my business running, and it’s just… well, it’s the dream, isn’t it?”

“Quite.” Crowley grinned at him, then, a real proper beaming smile, and Ezra’s heart almost fell out of his chest. Luckily, Ezra was spared from having to do one of those uncomfortable moments of choking and spluttering by the reappearance of the waitress, who was bearing a tray with three rolls of sushi on it.

Ezra pointed to each one and explained it to Crowley (“They call this one a California roll, my dear. It doesn’t have any raw fish, it’s just crab and cucumber and such…”), and he was relieved to see that Crowley knew how to hold chopsticks. He couldn’t quite stifle a little giggle when Crowley picked up a piece of the California roll and examined it like he was trying to count the grains of rice. Ezra tried not to pay too much attention as Crowley chewed carefully and thoughtfully, so he busied himself with inhaling three pieces of a different roll, scarcely even taking the time to savor the bites.

“It’s not bad,” Crowley said after a moment. “What’s that one, again?” He gestured to the one that Ezra had already eaten nearly half of, and Ezra explained it again.

The rest of the meal passed in the same sort of way. Ezra instructed his less-experienced tablemate to try a piece of pickled ginger on top of a bite of sushi, which Crowley hated, and a bit of wasabi in the soy sauce, which Crowley liked. They laughed a little about the poorly-masked disgusted facial expressions of a well-dressed man sitting at a table full of other equally well-dressed men across the restaurant. Crowley guessed that they were at a business lunch of some sort and began to tell an imaginary version of events, which was so funny at one point that Ezra actually choked on a piece of ginger and Crowley had to call the waitress over to refill Ezra’s water glass.

Eventually, the sushi was gone, the plates had been cleared, and the check had been handed (slightly embarrassingly, Ezra thought) to Crowley. Without saying a word, Crowley pulled out a sleek black credit card and tucked it into the checkbook, handing it back to the waitress with a smile.

“You didn’t have to do that,” protested Ezra. “I could have paid it, or we could have split it, or-” He was cut off by a glare from Crowley that he couldn’t see but could definitely feel, so he backtracked and just said, “Well, thank you, my dear.”

“Welcome.” It was more of a grunt than an actual word, but Ezra gave Crowley a grateful smile anyway and was thrilled when he got one in return.

“Crowley,” Ezra said a few minutes later as they left the restaurant. “Thank you for coming. I had a lovely time.”

“Thank you for asking. I did as well.” With a little wave, Crowley swaggered off toward a car lot, and Ezra began the short walk back to his bookshop.

Ezra didn’t hear from Crowley for a number of days. He tried not to think anything of it; surely a man such as Crowley had a very busy social life and wouldn’t have much time to hang around middle-aged booksellers. To take his mind off of the lack of communication from Crowley, Ezra went about his business as normally as possible. He slept a bit less because when he slept he often dreamed of Crowley, and he re-guled and re-bound many more books than he usually would in a week because it was something to do to keep his hands busy. When he wasn’t fixing books or politely discouraging customers who were interested in buying one of his first editions, Ezra usually walked around Soho, avoided the other shopowners (who had been trying to apprehend him and give him a talking-to about the state of his shop for quite some time), and wound up at the bakery. He read the newspaper every day, drank far too many cups of tea, ate far too many pastries, and pulled Anathema away from her job for increasingly long amounts of time. During all of this, though, thoughts of Crowley niggled at the back of his mind, and nothing he did to occupy himself would make them stop.

It was the following Monday night, exactly a week from when they’d had lunch, and Ezra was giving himself a dressing-down out loud in the mirror - because such a desperate situation as crushing on one of his only friends even though he’d sworn off romance at all costs called for a verbal reprimand instead of a mental one - when there was a loud knock at the door downstairs. Shaking himself out of what was becoming a rather heated one-sided argument, Ezra stomped downstairs to confront whatever demon-possessed person had thought it a good idea to come to the shop so very late at night (it was only eight o’clock, but Ezra considered any hour past six-thirty to be inappropriate for visitors). He threw open the door, ready to civilly raise his voice at the person on the other side, and nearly toppled over in shock.

Crowley was standing on his front stoop holding a beaten-up cardboard box and a tin of biscuits, looking very worried. “Do you know that your phone’s not working, Ezra?”

Ezra had, in fact, _not_ known this. It wasn’t as though the phone to his shop rang very often - a select few people had the number, and so it wasn’t uncommon for it to go a week or more without ringing. In all the time he’d been waiting for Crowley to call, he hadn’t even thought to check and see that his phone was actually working, which now seemed like a very stupid oversight.

“I… no, I wasn’t aware… what are you doing here?”

Crowley shifted a little, balancing the small cardboard box on his bony hip and tapping one foot against the pavement. “Thought something might’ve happened to you,” he muttered. “It wouldn’t be very friendly of me not to come check in, would it?”

“I suppose not,” said Ezra faintly. Crowley adjusted the box again, and Ezra realized in horror that he hadn’t even offered to let Crowley inside, a mistake that he rectified by yanking the door open even wider and gesturing for Crowley to come in.

This, of course, didn’t help Crowley very much, because the only flat surfaces in view were the tops of waist-height stacks of books. Ezra walked behind one of the larger stacks, calling for Crowley to follow, and led his guest to the (clear, as always) checkout counter. Gently, Crowley set down the box and the tin and leaned against the counter with a sort of fluid grace that Ezra had never possessed. Sometimes Ezra doubted if Crowley even had bones, for all of his motions were beautiful and soft in comparison to Ezra’s heavy foot-falls and jerky hand gestures.

Crowley cleared his throat and pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “I found something in a fellow professor’s attic the other day - I was over there to help her clean, you see - and I asked her if I could have them for a friend. She said yes, so I thought I’d bring them by.” He pointed to the box, which looked like it was being held together by the sheer force of some higher power’s imagination, and Ezra pulled the box across the counter.

Inside were two brass bookends in a shape Ezra didn’t recognize. They sort of looked like hollow globes, but instead of continents, there were hoops of metal around the outside and a small ball at the center. “Oh,” Ezra murmured. “These are beautiful.” He knew it would be impolite to mention that he actually didn’t use bookends because all of his shelves were full, so he just gave Crowley a dazzling smile and went back to inspecting the little spheres.

“Do you know what they’re supposed to look like?” Blushing a little, Ezra shook his head, and Crowley made a happy humming sound in the back of his throat. “They’re called armillary spheres. They were used in the 1600s and 1700s by astronomers to discuss different theories on the solar system and show predictions and things. If they were the real ones, they’d be quite a lot bigger, but these are just models… whoever made these into bookends probably just saw one in a museum or something and thought it was pretty.”

“They _are_ pretty.” Ezra picked one of them up and turned it around, trying to ignore the quick smile that had broken out across Crowley’s face.

“No one uses them any more, of course. Haven’t in centuries. But I’ve got one in my office - I fancy them a bit, they’re a cool piece of astronomical history - and I saw these and just thought ‘Hey, Ezra has a ton of books, he might like them.’ So… yeah. Anyway.”

Before he could stop himself, Ezra leaned over the counter and kissed Crowley on the cheek, telling himself that it was in the same friendly way as he kissed Anathema, and was pleased when Crowley’s face went a brilliant shade of scarlet. “Thank you, dear. These are wonderful.”

“Well.” Crowley coughed a little. “What’s the good in having friends if you don’t think of them sometimes, eh?” He ran a hand through his dark hair, and Ezra thought the normal silkiness of his voice sounded a bit more forced than normal. Sighing a little, he promised himself that he would resume his self-scolding with renewed vigor upstairs as soon as Crowley had gone.

“Thank you,” Ezra said again, moving the bookends to the other side of the counter - he’d figure out where to put them later. “Now. Would you like something to drink? I’ve got a lovely bottle of Chateau-”

“Er, no,” Crowley said quickly, the blush still not gone from his cheeks. “I should get home. I just wanted to make sure you were still alive and bring you those paperweights, so…” He stood up and adjusted the collar of his plum-colored shirt, carefully not looking at Ezra as he did so.

Ezra felt his stomach drop down to his shoes. “Right. Right, of course, I shouldn’t have presumed that you’d want- right, certainly.”

“Maybe some other time?” This suggestion was made in Crowley’s usual uncaring drawl, but there was some measure of hopefulness in it.

Ezra beamed. “Yes. Any time you like.”

Crowley was halfway out the door when he seemed to remember something. “Oh! I was going to ask: Adam’s coming to stay with me this weekend, and he’s quite fond of you. I’m planning to take him to the new dinosaur exhibit at the science museum, and I wondered if you might like to come along with us.”

“Me?”

Due to the ever-present sunglasses, Ezra couldn’t see Crowley’s eyes (and he made a mental note to ask about the glasses), but he could have sworn that Crowley had rolled them. “Yes. You’re a smart bloke, I thought you might know a bit more about some of the things than the museum placards.”

While it was true that Ezra did know a lot of information about many different things, dinosaurs were not exactly in his wheelhouse. However, because he dearly wanted to go with Adam and Crowley, he decided to do as much research as possible and _make_ them a part of his wheelhouse.

Unfortunately, his brain had the horrible habit of going to mush whenever Crowley was around, and so instead of saying something nice and normal like _“Yes, I’d be happy to come along, thank you for the invite, dear boy,”_ Ezra said “It’s a date.” And then Crowley’s jaw dropped open and Ezra felt like slapping himself, and both grown men just sort of stood around and stared at each other for a moment or two until Ezra had gotten enough composure to stutter his way around a retraction. “Not… not a _date,_ just an outing… I didn’t mean to… oh, _cripes_.”

Crowley started laughing a low, full-body laugh at that, and Ezra was thankful for the first time in his life that he used very outdated and not-relevant expressions. It was a welcome distraction from the embarrassment of his Freudian slip, so Ezra laughed along with him.

Finally, Crowley straightened up from where he’d been bracing himself against Ezra’s door frame. “Saturday, then. We’re going at noon, so I’ll be here around eleven?”

“Lovely,” said Ezra, still chuckling.

“Good.”

Ezra closed the door as Crowley walked away, calling out “Goodnight, Crowley!” as an afterthought. He couldn't be sure, but he thought that he heard Crowley parrot _“Cripes!”_ in a falsetto voice by way of answer. He turned back to his now-empty bookshop, casting an affectionate glance at the brass spheres on the counter, and he walked over to the wall-mounted telephone to see what the problem was. One of the wires had fallen loose, so Ezra plugged it back in and was pleased to hear the normal buzzing dial tone when he picked up the receiver.

After the roar of the Bentley’s motor had faded away, Ezra plodded back upstairs and changed into his pyjamas. Then, he stood himself back in front of the mirror and proceeded to call himself all of the Shakespearean-era equivalents to “idiot” that he could come up with. Because really, what kind of self-respecting, friendship-starved, romance-averse man makes the mistake of calling a friendly outing (with a handsome bloke that said man had rejected quite harshly not even a year previously) a date?

The answer to that question was, of course, the only self-respecting, friendship-starved, romance-averse man in London, and he knew it, so he resigned himself to another good bout of Elizabethan insults and gave himself a mental kick in the pants.


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter follows a short sequence of events: Ezra goes with Adam and Crowley to the museum, Adam tells Ezra something surprising, Ezra freaks out about the thing, and some very important (and angst-filled, sorry) things about Ezra are revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooooooooo....
> 
> ....you guys might hate me for this (I also hate me a little for this), but like, mostly done with the angst now. I think. Probably. 
> 
> This chapter dragged on for quite a bit longer than I'd intended, but my muse is apparently a caffeine-hyped-child because it CAN'T MAKE UP ITS MIND AND IS VERY HARD TO CONTROL. Anywho. Here you go, I hope you enjoy it (to the extent that that's possible)!
> 
> I love y'all very much! Thanks for the support, and as always I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments - even if you're mad at me, I'd still like to know! ;)
> 
> Warnings in this chapter for language (HA, back to normal), some pretty heavy angst, and a couple different discussions of sexuality. There are no slurs in this chapter, but there is a brief reference to homophobic bullying.

“Ezra, what was your favorite dinosaur when you were my age?” Adam was holding the stuffed T-Rex that Crowley had bought for him in one hand and a nearly empty soda cup in the other. He was slurping at it obnoxiously, which caused Crowley to take it from him and chuck it into the nearest rubbish bin. When Adam scowled and stuck his tongue out at his godfather, Ezra had a fleeting moment of hope that he wouldn’t have to answer the question, but then Adam was staring at him again with those wide brown eyes, and he sighed.

“I didn’t have a favorite dinosaur when I was a boy,” Ezra said simply, looking at Crowley for help. Unfortunately, Crowley was looking the other direction, so Adam pressed on.

“Why? You know _loads_ about them, you must’ve liked one best.”

Neither Adam nor Crowley knew this, of course, but Ezra had known next to nothing about dinosaurs until a few days prior, when he’d gone rummaging through his books and found only one with any vague relevance to the prehistoric creatures. He’d read it, but it hadn’t given him too much information, and so on Friday he’d closed the shop for the day and spent hours at the public library, reading and researching and memorizing. In his mind, he rationalized this as a way to get Adam to like him more, but his real reason was something more like _“I have a crush on this gorgeous man, and he thinks I’m intelligent, so I will know things about this, damnit.”_ He was very embarrassed about this, and so he decided against telling Adam that he’d spent the previous day with his nose buried in paleontology books and instead said “Because I didn’t start liking dinosaurs until recently.”

Adam looked confused. “But what about toys and things? And movies, like Jurassic Park?” He made an effort at mimicking a dinosaur’s roar, which made Crowley chuckle and ruffle Adam’s curls. “Dinosaurs are so cool. ‘Specially the meat-eater ones, they just could rip stuff apart, y’know?”

Not knowing what else to do or say, Ezra nodded. “Yes, they’re very… _cool_.” There was a strange choking sound from Crowley, and when Ezra glanced over at him, he was trying to hide a laugh behind his hand. Ezra rolled his eyes good-naturedly and ignored this, turning back to Adam. “I just happened to like other things when I was your age, that’s all.”

Adam’s eyebrows shot into his curls, and he asked the exact question Ezra had been trying to avoid. “What kindsa things?”

“Well,” Ezra stalled, raking a hand through his hair and adjusting his bowtie. “I liked music, and books, and art, and baking.”

“Didja have a bike?”

“Yes, but I didn’t ride it much.”

“Why?”

“I liked to stay inside more.”

“What about sports?”

“I wasn’t very athletic.” With every one of Adam’s questions, Ezra felt himself blush a slightly darker shade of pink, and he began picking at a loose thread on his pullover. He hadn’t been questioned about his boyhood interests since he was made fun of for them when he actually was a boy, and some unpleasant memories featuring more than a few unkind slurs and a notable time when his head had been dunked in a toilet bowl were rising all too quickly in his mind.

Adam had opened his mouth to ask another question, but Crowley had finally clued in to Ezra’s discomfort. “Oi, Adam the Antichrist. Leave Ezra alone, will you?” At that, Ezra looked up gratefully and caught Crowley mouthing something that looked like “sorry,” and he gave a little smile and a nod in thanks.

Luckily for Ezra, Adam’s attention span was approximately twice that of a goldfish, and so Ezra was spared any further uncomfortable questions. Adam had seen a dog that he wanted to go play with - they had left the museum a little while ago and were walking around in a nearby park - and had grabbed the hands of both of the men next to him, tucking his stuffed dinosaur under his arm and tugging them along towards the dog.

When Adam had politely asked the dog’s owner if he could pet it and busied himself doing so, Crowley leaned over to whisper an apology to Ezra. “Sorry about that. He’s just a curious kid, you know? Doesn’t know when to stop.”

Ezra laughed a little and waved his hand dismissively, trying not to pay too much attention to the warmth of Crowley’s breath on his ear and neck. “It’s perfectly alright, my dear. I just… don’t have the fondest memories of my teenage years. Wasn’t very fun being a boy who liked boys back in those days.”

“I know,” Crowley said. “I had it better because I go in for women as well, so not too many people knew I liked blokes.”

“It was a bit more difficult to hide, for me,” Ezra joked, trying desperately to lighten the mood. “I’ve always dressed, talked, and acted like the stereotype of a gay man, even before I knew what that meant.”

Crowley laughed a little. “You do, a bit.”

“A lot.”

“Alright. A lot,” Crowley conceded, giving Ezra a wide smile that made Ezra’s mind go white for a moment. They stood in companionable silence until Adam finally returned from petting the dog, covered in hair and grinning. The three walked back to the museum car park and climbed into the Bentley, Adam regaling them with stories of all of the dogs he’d seen by his house recently and how he was going to convince his mum and dad to get him one (Crowley scoffed at this, but Ezra told Adam that it sounded very nice).

“Uncle AJ,” Adam said as they pulled out onto the street. “I’m hungry, can we get a snack?”

“Sure, mate,” Crowley said. “What do you want?”

“Mmmm… chips.”

The conversation dropped for a moment as Crowley made a very dangerous right turn across two lanes of oncoming traffic (Adam whooped and Ezra cringed). When Ezra peeled his eyes open again, Crowley was watching him rather than the road, and he resisted the urge to slam them shut again. “Do you need me to take you home, Ezra, or would you like to come to chips with us?”

“Chips sound lovely. I can buy,” said Ezra cheerfully. “Call it a thank-you for allowing me to spend the day with you both.” He turned in his seat and winked at Adam, who winked clumsily back.

As most Londoners do, Crowley had a favorite chippie, and so that was where they went. When the got to the shop, everyone ordered and Ezra paid (after a brief squabble in which Crowley had tried to hand his own credit card to the cashier when Ezra’s back was turned), and then they found a suitably not-greasy table near the door to sit at. Crowley excused himself to go to the loo, and as soon as he was out of earshot, Adam wheeled around to face Ezra, a mischievous little smirk on his lips.

“Ezra, d’you wanna date Uncle AJ?”

Ezra, who had just taken a sip of water, choked rather violently at that. “Would I _what_?”

“Think you should,” Adam said with a shrug, smiling charmingly at the waiter who’d just arrived to drop off their food. “He likes you.”

There was a lot to unpack in those last three words. By Ezra’s count, it had been nearly ten months since he’d first met Crowley and Adam, which meant it had been about ten weeks shy of a year since he’d rejected Crowley. He knew, of course, that _he_ still thought that Crowley was handsome and a lovely person and that he was struggling daily to weaken the annoyingly persistent thought of dating Crowley that lingered in the back of his mind, but he’d assumed that Crowley would have moved on to a better option. According to Adam, though, he apparently hadn’t.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ezra saw the men’s restroom door swing open and Crowley came swaggering out, so he placed his hand lightly over Adam’s. “I’m certain you must be mistaken, dear boy. Your godfather is a wonderful man, but he must have his eye on someone else by now.”

“He doesn’t.” Adam munched on a chip and grinned at Ezra with a mouthful of potato. He turned around a little, catching sight of Crowley, and shot Ezra another uncoordinated wink before picking up a piece of fish with a sort of nonchalance that was very reminiscent of Crowley.

Ezra hadn’t realized that he’d dropped his jaw in shock, but Crowley noticed right away and slid into the chair next to Adam. “Oh, no. What did he say?”

“Nothing,” said Ezra quickly, snapping his mouth shut. “Nothing at all. I just remembered that I might have… it doesn’t matter.” He had, of course, remembered nothing, but he was a terrible liar and couldn’t think of anything that would warrant the shocked look on his face. So, in lieu of making an even bigger fool of himself by telling the truth, Ezra shoved a too-hot chip into his mouth and promptly burned off the top layer of tastebuds on his tongue. Crowley looked suspicious, but by some miracle he didn’t say anything else about it.

As soon as Ezra got back to the bookshop that evening, he put the kettle on and pulled a packet of emergency-only custard creams out of his cupboard. There were things that Ezra could forget about (or try to), like the way that Crowley smiled at him or the times when they’d accidentally bump shoulders or brush hands, and then there was _this_. This was a bombshell, a catastrophic nuclear-level emotional meltdown, and Ezra had no idea what to do about it.

“I am _not_ going to date AJ Crowley,” Ezra snarled at the biscuit in his hand. “I am not going to date _anyone_. Ever.” He’d been telling himself this for years, of course, but the words sounded different somehow. They sounded, Ezra realized with a horrified shudder, like a lie.

He finished off the packet of biscuits, forgetting entirely about the tea that had by that time been steeping for nearly a quarter of an hour too long, and curled up in his lumpy armchair. Desperately, Ezra tried to convince himself that Crowley was too much like Gabriel - always suave, always immaculately dressed, always dangerously flirtatious with other people - but the little voice in his head that had taken Crowley’s side from the beginning refused to be silenced. It told him that Crowley was different than Gabriel in all the ways that mattered. He paid for meals when he didn’t have to, looked out for Ezra’s feelings, opened the car door for Ezra and Adam, cared deeply about his profession, and was capable of genuine self-sacrificial love. Unbidden, the memory of Crowley leaning against the counter next to a dilapidated cardboard box that held beautiful paperweights sprang into Ezra’s mind, and he groaned.

“I have to talk to someone about this,” Ezra mumbled. “Tomorrow.” And then, with his slightly pudgy body crumpled up in an armchair that was well-worn and in desperate need of replacing, he fell into a restless sleep.

In the morning, he very much regretted his scatter-brained decision to spend the night in a _bloody fucking chair_ instead of his comfortable bed, and he grumbled to himself about his various aches and pains as he made a cup of cocoa (and disposed of the oversteeped and undrunk tea from the night before) and spent too long picking out a bowtie for the day. “You’re an old man, Ezra Fell,” he said to his reflection as he tied his tie. “Far too old to sleep in a sodding _chair_ , at least. You daft, lonely, _stupid_ man.”

Ezra hadn’t been in the bakery for longer than half a second before he heard Anathema call “Uncle James, I’m taking my break.” He figured that he must look worse than he thought, a suspicion which was confirmed when Anathema thrust a muffin into his hands and shoved him back out of the door, looking very deeply concerned. “You look awful.”

He took a bite of his muffin. “That’s not a very polite thing to say, my dear girl.”

“Really, though.” He didn’t reply or even look up, which meant than Anathema huffed a very put-upon sigh and grabbed him by the elbow. “Come on, Ezra. We’re going for a walk.”

And so walk they did. Ezra finished his muffin in silence, tossing the wrapper into a bin and picking chocolate crumbs out from under his nails (noticing as he did so that they looked _atrocious_ ; what kind of person had he become in the last few days to not see that until now?). Anathema had yet to let go of his arm, and she kept sighing in progressively louder and more irritating ways until he finally looked over at her and said, “I went out with Crowley and Adam yesterday.”

“You said you were going to. Did something happen?”

“No.” Ezra sighed. “Well, yes. Maybe.” They’d reached some sort of small public garden, and he quickly found himself being yanked into it and forcefully tugged down onto the small, wrought-iron bench in the center.

“You just gave me every possible answer to a very simple question, mate. Something _must_ have happened - you haven’t looked this fucked up since the whole Gabriel incident.”

Ezra rolled his eyes halfheartedly. “It can’t possibly be _that_ bad.”

Anathema rolled her eyes right back. “It’s that bad. Trust me. I’m possibly the only person on the planet who has the authority to make that comparison because I’m - to the best of my knowledge - the only one who saw and talked to you the morning after that whole thing went down, and I’m assuming I’m the only one who’s done the same today.” At Ezra’s sigh, the pitying expression on her face changed into one of smug satisfaction. “See? I know you better than you think, you tartan-loving idiot. Spill.”

“Adam said something, and it’s been bothering me.”

This was not what Anathema had been expecting. “What the bleeding fuck did he say to get you this upset?”

“Watch your language, please, my dear.”

“ _Ezra_.”

Ezra found that he couldn’t do this while looking at her. He was too embarrassed and ashamed to admit that he’d gone and fallen for a man who actually wanted him back, too afraid that saying the words out loud would make it real, and so he sat in stoic silence until one of Anathema’s navy-blue-painted fingernails dug into his ribs.

“He said that Crowley- oh, it’s stupid, he’s probably wrong anyway, I can’t believe I’ve let this get to me-”

“For _fuck’s_ sake,” Anathema groaned, leaning her head back against the bench. “You have to tell me what he said first, and _then_ we can talk about whether he was right or wrong.”

“He said that Crowley likes me still and that Crowley and I should… date, court, whatever.” The words came out of Ezra’s mouth in a tumble and landed on the stretch of empty bench between his thighs and Anathema’s skirt. Ezra stared at that spot blankly, trying to wish away the hope that had risen in his heart.

“Oh, God. I need to meet this kid.” She sounded odd, so Ezra steeled his resolve and looked up at her. He almost fell off the bench when he saw that the girl was actually smiling.

“Why?”

“Because I need to buy him an ice cream. Or, you know, a car. Or a house.” She was still grinning like a madwoman, and Ezra saw red.

“You cannot be telling me that you think this is a good thing,” he hissed, the sharpness of his words biting at his tongue.

Anathema leaned over and kissed him on his blood-flushed cheek. “I think this is a good thing.”

“It’s _not_.”

“Why?”

For possibly the first time in forever, Ezra found that he’d prefer to stand than sit, so he rose and started pacing in front of the bench. “Because I _like_ him, Anathema. I really… I really like him. And I _can’t_.”

“Why can’t you?” The calmness of her voice was starting to get on Ezra’s nerves.

He stopped walking, blue eyes blazing. “You know why.”

“I know that you got hurt really badly by a dickwad named Gabriel almost six years ago. I know that after that happened, you swore to yourself and to me and to God and to the whole sodding world that you wouldn’t let yourself fall in love again. I _also_ know that no one asked you to do that. No one made you do that. You made the rules, and you made the promise, and so I know that you’re holding yourself back from happiness for no reason at all.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I’m a man of my word, dear,” Ezra said, trying to grasp at the last frazzled strands of his self-control. “Breaking promises ends in people getting hurt.”

Anathema’s warm hand wrapped around Ezra’s, and she gently pulled him back down onto the bench. “Ezra, who do you think is going to get hurt if you break a promise that you made _to yourself_?”

“Me.” He took a shuddering breath as (without his permission) hot, angry tears began to fall onto his lap. “I will.”

“You don’t know that.”

Ezra couldn’t stop himself from crying, so he ripped his glasses off of his face and tucked them into the pocket of his shirt. “Don’t I?”

“No, you don’t. It might end badly, sure. Relationships are unpredictable like that. But it also might not. It might end in rings and tuxedos and first dances and buying a house together or whatever it is that you want to do that you never got to do with that _absolute knob_ you were with before.” 

“It'll end badly, I know it. So, I can just be friends with him,” Ezra whispered feebly. “It doesn’t have to be anything else.”

Suddenly, Anathema’s hand slid out of his and landed on his jaw, and his face was jerked toward hers. Her eyes were narrow. “Why do you do this to yourself? Why do you make yourself so miserable, Ezra? Why can’t you just let yourself be _happy_ , just once?”

Something dark and slimy dislodged itself from Ezra’s taped-up soul. It had settled there the night that he’d found out about Gabriel’s infidelity, and Ezra had done a good job of ignoring it and pushing it down and covering it with better things, but it had stayed. And it had stayed hidden, until that morning on a cold metal bench in the middle of a strange garden, when it burst free of the shackles of light in which Ezra had bound it.

“Because I don’t deserve to be happy. If I’d been better, with Gabriel, he never would have done what he did. He never would have gone looking for someone else. He would have stayed with me, and he would have loved me back. But I wasn’t good enough. I’m… I’m _not_ good enough, don’t you see?” He was breathing hard, trying to choke down the ugly words that were scalding his throat and singeing his lips like so much acid, but they kept coming. “I can’t put Crowley through that. Do you understand? I can’t let Crowley get tied down with someone like me. I may not be good enough, but I’m not that evil, either.”

Anathema’s eyes had darkened as Ezra spoke, and her hands had moved from his face to his shoulders, the tips of her fingers now digging into the fabric of his shirt. When she started shaking him, it was gentle enough to not be painful, but hard enough that it took him by surprise. She didn’t stop after a second or two; she kept shaking and shaking and shaking, and to Ezra’s horror, she started to cry.

“You listen to me,” she said eventually. She stopped shaking him, but her hands stayed where they were. “Ezra Fell, you listen to me _right now_.”

“Listening.” His voice sounded hollow and small even to his own ears.

“What happened with Gabriel was _not your fault_. He was the worst kind of person. You didn’t do anything wrong - you loved him, which he probably never deserved - and he treated you like shit. That’s not on you.” She stared at him, tears shining on her cheeks. “Say it. Tell me that it’s not your fault.”

“It’s not my fault.” It was a whisper, barely even there.

“It’s _not_ your fault.”

“It’s not my fault.”

He wanted to believe it. More than anything, Ezra wanted to believe the words he was saying, wanted to let go of the guilt he’d falsely imposed upon himself, but there was something nagging and pulling at him still. When that horrible black mark on Ezra’s soul had forced its way out of his body, it had torn apart everything that he’d so carefully stitched back together. The wounds that Gabriel had left were ripped open and bleeding, and all of his artfully constructed walls were in shambles at his feet. This is why he told Anathema something he’d never told her before; he told her because he simply couldn’t _not_.

“We didn’t… Gabriel and I, we didn’t-" He fumbled, flapping one of his hands in an indecipherable nonverbal gesture, "-sleep together. In the... in the most not-chaste interpretation of the phrase. We shared a bed, of course, but only for actual sleeping.”

Anathema’s forehead scrunched into hundreds of little frown lines. “What?”

“There’s a word for it now, for what I am,” Ezra said quickly. “I don’t use it, really, because it’s a label that I’m not attached to, but it might help you understand. It’s, erm, asexual. I don’t… I don’t feel things _that_ way, the way that other people do. I have aesthetic attraction to people, see - like Crowley, he’s all lovely angles and tan skin and beautiful smiles - and I have romantic attraction, so I like kissing and holding hands and such like, but nothing past that. I just… I’m just a bit broken, in that regard.”

“Oh,” said Anathema softly. “Right.”

“When I told Gabriel, he said he was fine with it. He told me that he loved me anyway, that we could still work together… he told me that he loved me in spite of it.”

Anathema snorted. “God, I _hate_ that guy.”

“Don’t you see, though? I can’t let myself be in lo- _like_ , I can’t let myself like Crowley because I don’t want him to have to deal with that. He’s very… most young people would probably call him 'sexy,' I think, but I obviously wouldn’t… so I don’t want to get in the way of him living his life.”

“Have you told him?”

Ezra shuddered. “ _Heavens_ , no. I don’t know him well enough, for one. And I don’t want him to see me differently. I... I guess I like very much that he looks at me the way that he does.” He sighed and straightened up, taking one of Anathema’s hands in his. It had been long enough, and he found himself quite insecure about the amount of crying and blabbing he'd just done. “Thank you for listening, dear. I’m sorry about this.”

“Oi,” snapped Anathema. “Don’t apologize. This is what friends are for.”

“Mmm.” He wasn’t convinced, but he smiled at her anyway.

They sat in the pretty little garden for a few minutes longer until Anathema’s phone rang and they both knew that she needed to get back to the bakery. As they walked, Anathema never dropped Ezra’s hand, and that made him smile for real.

When they reached the bakery, Anathema stopped outside. She kissed Ezra on the cheek, and he returned the gesture, but she still held onto his hand as she chewed on her bottom lip. Finally, “You said something, earlier. I think you’re wrong about it.”

“What?”

“You said that not having… dunno, a sex drive? You said that makes you broken. I don’t think it does.”

When Ezra laughed, his chest was so tight that it came out high-pitched and strangled. “Oh? What would you call it, then?”

“I’d call it you being you, Ezra.” And then she let go of his hand and practically threw herself into his arms, and Ezra reacted on instinct and hugged her back. Somewhere in the back of his mind it occurred to him that he hadn’t been hugged in years, so he squeezed her tighter because he’d nearly forgotten what it felt like to be held.

“Thank you,” he whispered into her ear. “You’re a darling, and Newton is a very lucky man.” Anathema giggled a little and kissed his cheek again before ducking inside the bakery.

As he walked back to the bookshop, Ezra felt remarkably lighter, and for the first time in nearly six years, he dared to think about the possibility that he might (maybe, a _big_ maybe) be worthy of love.


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An evening drinking wine in the bookshop leads to interesting conversations and an invitation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, guys. This is literally like 70% dialogue, sorry, but I needed a chapter to transition away from all the angst. I'm not super happy with it, but if you all like it okay, I'll leave it alone and just move on. If you don't, let me know and I'll make some changes. This is truly just me trying to get past the writer's block that's built up over the past couple of days, so I won't be offended if you'd prefer that I change it! This chapter is fairly short, so I'll try to get another one up tonight or tomorrow. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's devoted time and attention to reading this story! I'm not entirely sure if it's up to par with my usual writing, but I hope that it's making y'all happy anyway. Thanks for everything, y'all!
> 
> heads up in this chapter for alcohol use and language.

Although he hadn’t quite decided what to do about the whole dating-Crowley situation, Ezra had resolved himself to at least become better friends with the man. That is how they ended up in the back room of Ezra’s bookshop on a Monday night a little over a week after Ezra’s conversation with Anathema, sharing a nice bottle of Ezra’s favorite pinot noir and talking about Oscar Wilde.

“I always felt a little bad for Dorian, though,” Crowley said, taking a long sip of his wine and letting the glass hang dangerously from his long fingers.

Ezra gasped. “No, you can’t have!”

“I did. I understood him a little, I guess. Believe it or not, I myself have had my own share of vanity issues.” Dark eyebrows wiggled at Ezra over the top of the ever-present sunglasses.

“I just don’t think he’s much of a sympathetic character.”

“Then you don’t understand the phrase ‘morally grey,’ my friend.”

This was an assault on Ezra’s literary taste and expertise, which was something that Ezra had never and would never stand for. He straightened up on his end of the sofa, settling his wine glass down so that he could adjust his bowtie with a sniff. “I know what a morally grey character is, Crowley. Dorian Gray just doesn’t happen to be one.”

“Agree to disagree.” Crowley sighed and took another drink of wine, stretching his long gangly limbs out across his half of the couch like a creeper vine on a garden wall. Bathed in the dim light from the lamp on Ezra’s desk, Crowley looked like he belonged in a Renaissance painting, and Ezra allowed himself a brief moment to appreciate the objective beauty of it all.

“I suppose I’ll have to.” Ezra picked his glass back up and settled against the cushions. “So, my dear. Tell me a secret.”

This was a game that they’d begun playing a few days earlier, when they met at St. James’s Park for an afternoon of walking and duck-feeding (which was what Ezra had been heading out to do when Crowley had called, hence the joint outing). Somewhere around their third lap around the duck pond, they’d run out of things to talk about, and so Crowley had joked that the whole point of doing things with friends was to learn more about them. Thus, a very strange game had arisen: one party would ask the other to tell a secret during an awkward lapse in conversation, and the other would have to come up with something. It was a childish game, and one entirely inappropriate for two men over the age of thirty to be playing, but they each got so nervous around the other that it was, in a way, actually a little necessary.

This is a list (one which was actually written down and tucked into one of Ezra’s many desk drawers) of what Ezra had learned about Crowley so far:

1\. He hated Earl Grey tea.

2\. The Bentley was restored by his father, who had sort of a thing for old cars, and passed onto him from there.

3\. His favorite show was Golden Girls (this secret had been accompanied by a hissed threat upon Ezra’s life if it ever got out).

4\. He once napped for an entire weekend just because he wanted to.

5\. Whereas most people found fire cozy and comforting, Crowley was terrified by it because he’d seen a house burn down when he was a child and it had traumatized him.

6\. He once gave a student a low mark on a lab because the boy had been harassing the girl sitting next to him in class.

Crowley laughed a little at the reminder of the game. “Right. What secret haven’t I told you yet?”

There was a sort of unspoken rule that the person telling the secret got to choose what secret to tell. There wasn’t a specific question that needed answering, and so Ezra hadn’t told Crowley about Gabriel, and Crowley hadn’t told him about the sunglasses. Ezra found himself in the paradoxical situation of being glad about the first of those things and disappointed about the second. However, he knew he couldn’t just start asking personal questions without getting them in return, and he thought that prior relationships were best left out of current friendly - or potentially romantic, although Ezra was trying not to think too much about that yet - ones.

He was jolted out of his musing by the sound of Crowley cracking his knuckles. When he looked over, a wide grin was plastered across Crowley’s face. “My favorite horror movie is _The Silence of the Lambs_.”

“Oh, that’s quite an excellent novel, actually.”

The sound of Crowley snorting some very expensive wine up his nose was followed immediately by an incredulous cry of “Did you just say _novel_?”

“Yes.”

Crowley’s jaw dropped down to his chest. “You cannot seriously be telling me that you haven’t ever seen _The Silence of the Lambs_.”

Shrugging, Ezra topped off his wine glass and gestured to Crowley’s with the bottle, refilling it as well when Crowley nodded. “I don’t own a television, dear.”

“You’re fucking kidding.”

“I assure you that I am not.”

“So you’ve never seen Golden Girls?”

Ezra laughed. Of course that would be Crowley’s first question. “I have, actually. I… knew someone, once, and he had a very nice television set, and so I caught a few episodes with him on occasion.” The aforementioned someone was Gabriel, but Crowley didn’t need to know that.

Crowley was still stretched out over every available inch of space, but his lanky limbs had gone stiff with shock and his mouth was still hanging open. “So, you haven’t seen the best horror movie of all time, and you don’t own a TV at all, and you don’t have a mobile phone, and I’ve yet to even see an iPod or a radio back here, so it’s probably safe to assume that you don’t have one of those, either.” This was a correct assumption, as Ezra used his father’s old record player for music and saw no need to buy anything else. “Blimey, mate. You really need to move into the twenty-first century, or at least the late twentieth.”

Ezra’s choice in having exactly zero modern technology puzzled pretty much everyone, including his parents. He was a child of the 80’s, which meant that he grew up during a tech boom and had access to all of it when he was young. But the old man inside of his young body hadn’t liked all of that newfangled stuff, and so when he moved out of his parents’ house, he didn’t buy any of it for himself. Ezra’s life was about simplicity and comfort, and things like cell phones and tellies and radios just got in the way. He sniffed, crushing down the little voice that had sprung up and was urging him to go out _right this second_ and buy an iPod or a radio or a mobile, and took a large gulp of wine. “I’m perfectly fine just as I am, my dear fellow. I might be stuck in the past, but it’s a personal choice.”

“Incredible,” Crowley muttered, twirling his wine glass around by the stem in a way that made Ezra terribly afraid that some of its contents would end up on his cream-colored rug. “You are officially the strangest person I’ve ever met.” This was followed by a smile, but Ezra couldn’t stop his heart from clenching a little at that, and the desire to plunge quite abruptly into the world of modern technology intensified.

“Well.” Ezra stared at his lap. “Thank you, I suppose.” He tried to cover his embarrassment, but he apparently didn’t do it well or quickly enough, because Crowley noticed.

“I didn’t mean that as an insult, by the way.”

“No?” It had sounded like one.

“No. Just… you’re different.”

A small, strained giggle slipped past Ezra’s lips. “That doesn’t exactly sound like a compliment either, my dear.”

Crowley’s dark head rolled against the armrest of the sofa. “I _like_ different.”

The emphasis on the second word made Ezra’s lungs fail to function for a moment, but he reminded himself that the goal here was to be better friends with Crowley before attempting anything else, so he gave his friend a dismissive smile and a quick word of thanks before returning to the half-full wine glass in his hand. He didn’t see the flirtatious smile fall from Crowley’s face.

“So. This film you love. Would I like it?”

His mask of immaculate nonchalance back in place, Crowley made a strange grunting sound. “Probably not. There’s a lot of blood.”

Even the sound of the word made Ezra’s stomach do a funny twisting motion. “Oh. Then I should probably avoid it, eh?”

“Might be for the best.” Crowley’s voice sounded hollow, and Ezra found himself desperately wanting to fix that, so he said something that the rational part of his brain thought was incredibly counter-productive to his platonic aspirations.

“I suppose that you must have seen it a lot, though.” One of Crowley’s shoulders shrugged in assent. “So you might be able to tell me when the bloody parts are, and I’ll just close my eyes.”

In the span of two seconds, Crowley went from sprawled out to sitting up, leaning forward in attention. “What’re you suggesting?”

His face was so close to Ezra’s that Ezra could smell the wine on his breath, and Ezra’s heart jumped against his ribs. “I’m not usually one for films, but if you like this one so much, I’d be willing to give it a go.”

“Why?”

“Because ‘the whole point of friendship is to learn more about the other person, Ezra,’” Ezra said in a very bad impression of Crowley’s smooth baritone voice. “And one of the things about you is that you have some strange love for a very gory horror movie, which means that if I’m going to learn about you, I should find out why.”

Crowley hadn’t moved an inch, which was making Ezra’s mind blink in and out of conscious thought. Half of his brain told him to scoot backwards, to create some semblance of a decorous gap between them, and the other half told him to just suck it up and kiss Crowley right on the lips. Luckily, though, his body had gone so stiff with tension that it wasn’t paying much attention to his brain, and so he didn’t move at all either. They just sat there for a too-long moment, Ezra staring at his reflection in the lenses of Crowley’s glasses and Crowley staring right back, until Crowley finally brought up the obvious hitch in the plan of movie-watching. “You said you haven’t got a television. How on earth are we supposed to watch a film?”

“I’d assumed that you have somewhere to call home, dear boy,” Ezra said teasingly.

Crowley startled a little at that and finally (to Ezra’s mixed reaction of relief and regret) settled down again on his end of the sofa. “I do.”

“You clearly have a telly because you watch that Golden Girls thing all the time.”

“Mmm, I do.” The flirtatious smile had settled itself back on Crowley’s lips, and it was making Ezra’s face a little warmer than he’d have liked it to be. “Say, Ezra. Would you possibly like to come over to my flat sometime and watch a film?”

Ezra could hear Crowley’s wink even though he couldn’t see it, and his face flushed even more. “That sounds lovely.”

“Good.” Crowley finished his glass of wine in one gulp. “Tomorrow night, then?”

“Yes.” There was a small victorious-sounding noise from Crowley’s side of the couch, but Ezra didn’t hear it because he was too busy trying to get the blood vessels in his cheeks to behave themselves.

Crowley went home fairly soon after that because he had an early morning class to teach. He’d left Ezra his address, but then he’d decided that he couldn’t risk Ezra being hit by “some maniac in a car,” so it was agreed that he would come around to collect Ezra at around eight the following evening.

“This is not a date,” Ezra told himself as he pulled off his bowtie. The voice in his head disagreed. 

He buttoned his tartan-patterned pyjamas. “Not a date.” That voice stuck its metaphorical tongue out at him. 

“It’s _not_ a date,” as he slammed his book shut and placed it on his bedside table, taking off his glasses and setting them gently on top. The voice gave him a mental slap across the face, and Ezra groaned into his pillow. 

In Mayfair, one Anthony Jay Crowley was laying in a silk-sheet covered bed and grinning at his ceiling, gleefully telling himself that it was a date.


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The unofficial date happens, and something goes horribly wrong (as always, because Ezra lives by Murphy's Law).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!! Sorry that I haven't gotten back to y'all's comments on the previous chapter yet - there are a LOT (thank you guys so freakin' much for that, by the way) but they're all lovely and I promise to respond as soon as I'm able. 
> 
> Okay, so some things on this chapter: there are a couple of things that need defining, so I'll do that later in this note. A LOT of stuff happens here, friends. It's a very eventful chapter, that much I can assure you!
> 
> And because I'm having a bit of a rough go of things at the moment, it's pretty angsty towards the end. What can I say, though - writing is cathartic for me, so it is what it is. I do promise that we will eventually resolve Ezra's issues and that things will turn all lovely and fluffy, so hold on for that!
> 
> Apologies for the gratuitous use of Silence of the Lambs quotes and allusions and for the cheesiest, most cliche'd reference to a particular line from a particular Robert Frost poem. Also, a note on Silence of the Lambs as a film: I know it's incredibly transphobic, and I really wish it wasn't, but it is. I do genuinely love it (as does Crowley) because the plot and acting are off the charts, but I do not agree with its portrayal of the trans community as evil (and neither do Crowley and Ezra). If any of y'all are trans and struggling, please know that you are wonderful and loved and that I am sending you ALL THE HUGS.
> 
> Okay, glossary of things: heterochromia is a condition in which someone is born with two different colored eyes (or one eye contains two different colors, depending on the type of heterochromia). Also, the mid-atlantic accent is that weird half-British half-American accent that people use in many black-and-white movies. Look it up on YouTube if you want to hear it!
> 
> heads up in this chapter for alcohol use, language, and mentions of past relationship trauma (no physical abuse, but acephobia and infidelity).

Eight o’clock on Tuesday night came sooner than Ezra had expected. He was upstairs changing his bowtie (from tweed to ivory-and-brown tartan - he thought he’d go for something a bit more stylish) when there was a knock on the door downstairs. Hurriedly, he ran his hands through his curls and tried to look as casual and normal as possible, giving himself a small smile in the mirror before going down to open the door.

Crowley was, as usual, dressed in tight-fitting dark clothes. He smelled of worn leather and some spice - cinnamon, maybe? - and a tiny smile was fixed on his lips. Tiny drops of rain had caught in his hair during the walk from the car to Ezra’s front door, and they glinted like tiny gemstones in the light of the streetlamp on the corner. Not for the first time, Ezra thought he looked like a supernatural being of some sort, like something that wasn’t quite earthly enough to be human, and he smiled.

“Ready to go?” Crowley’s smooth voice shook Ezra free of his thoughts.

“Yes.”

The ride to Crowley’s flat was as uneventful as any ride with Crowley could be, which is to say that there were only a handful of near-collisions and Ezra gasped “ _Crowley_ ” in horror only three times. The cassette player had finally decided to behave itself, so the sound of classic rock music filled the car as it sped through London.

Ezra wasn’t sure exactly what he’d imagined Crowley’s flat would look like, but it certainly was much different than he’d thought. The walls were painted a clean white and collided harshly with the black of the polished tile floor. There was an absurdly large collection of house plants against the wide window in the living room, and the only pieces of decor seemed to be prints of famous night-sky paintings (Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” was situated in what appeared to be a very special place) and various star maps. The whole thing was as sleek and fashionable as its owner, who was leaning against the white marble counter top in his kitchen with an amused smirk on his face. To Ezra, it felt cold and uninviting, and he had to suppress the urge to ask Crowley if he’d be interested in a rug or some couch cushions. But because Ezra was polite to a fault, he lied through his teeth. “Very nice place you have here, my dear.”

Crowley scoffed. “You hate it.”

“No,” Ezra insisted, trying to keep the embarrassed blush from rising into his cheeks as he turned around. “It’s very you, which means it’s quite… _hip_.”

There was no response save a choked-off laugh from Crowley, and Ezra noted with interest and annoyance that his friend’s sunglasses were still very much in place. He’d assumed that Crowley would take them off at home, at least, but clearly that was not the case. So, unable to tolerate those infernal things any longer, Ezra resolved himself to ask about them.

“Crowley,” he began slowly. “What’s the reason behind- why do you- I mean, if you don’t mind me asking, of course, would you be so kind as to tell me why-”

“The glasses,” Crowley interrupted with a stiff nod. “I was wondering when you’d bring them up.”

In spite of his best efforts, the blush that Ezra had been keeping down flooded his cheeks. “I’ve been meaning to. I just wasn’t quite sure how to ask.”

“I’ve got an eye condition. Freaks people out, so I wear the glasses.”

Ezra’s brow furrowed. “What sort of condition?” He’d been thinking that maybe it was a light-sensitivity thing, but the flat wasn’t well lit enough to warrant that (and, come to think of it, neither was the bookshop).

“It’s called heterochromia.”

“Oh,” Ezra said. “Yes, I’ve heard of it.”

Crowley gave a halfway interested grunt. “Yeah. But mine’s pretty extreme.” He still didn’t make any moves to remove his glasses.

“Can I… would you let me see?”

Crowley’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. “What?”

“Your eyes. Would you let me see them, please?” Ezra wasn’t sure what made him ask. He should have been satisfied with the explanation, and he shouldn’t have kept pressing, but there was a part of him that was burning with the desire to see Crowley’s eyes. The only reason he could think of for this desire was that Crowley’s eyes were part of Crowley, and so they were inherently important to Ezra.

In the time it took Ezra to think through all of that, Crowley had yanked off the dark glasses and placed them on the counter. He was staring at Ezra, jaw clenched and hands locked at his sides, and the anxiety was written all over his handsome face. Ezra had the fleeting notion that someone must have been truly cruel to Crowley about his eyes at some point in time to warrant _this_ severe of a reaction, but all coherent thoughts flew out of his head the moment his blue eyes met Crowley’s mismatched ones.

They were, in a word, magnificent. One was a piercing shade of blue, even lighter than Ezra's, and there was a gold-colored ring around the pupil. The other was a dark-chocolate-colored brown, so deep and monochromatic that it looked almost black in the dim kitchen lighting. The contrast was stark, certainly, and Ezra would have done a double-take had he not been expecting it, but he found that he loved it. Crowley’s eyes held the same sort of contrast as the man on whose face they were laid; dark and intimidating at first glance, but warm and interesting upon further examination.

Crowley coughed awkwardly and dropped his gaze from Ezra’s, reaching instinctively to replace his glasses. Without thinking, Ezra laid his hand over Crowley’s and said “No.”

“Let me put them back on,” Crowley said, voice calm and placating. He’d clearly done this before, and it obviously hadn’t gone over very well. “It’ll make you more comfortable.”

“Please. I like your eyes, dear. Truly.”

The raised-eyebrow look was much different when Crowley’s eyes were in view, Ezra found, and he decided that he liked it better. “You can’t be serious. No one likes them, Ezra.”

“I do.” With his other hand, Ezra reached up and angled Crowley’s jaw so that he could see those eyes again. “You’ve got a star, in that one.” He nodded toward the blue one and was pleasantly surprised to see tiny smile lines wrinkle the tan skin below Crowley’s eyebrows.

“You’re a walking cliche,” Crowley muttered softly. “I haven’t got a bloody star in my eye.”

“You _have_.” Ezra wasn’t lying; the gold on the inside of Crowley’s right iris was shaped vaguely like a star, which made it suit him even more. He dropped his hand from Crowley’s cheek and pulled the other one off of where it had still been resting against Crowley’s, blushing at his own self-assured casual touches. “Thank you for showing me.”

“Have you eaten dinner?” The abrupt topic change made Ezra’s head spin, so he just answered quickly in the negative. “Right, I’ve got some stuff to make pasta, how does that sound?”

“Erm,” said Ezra. “Lovely.”

Crowley moved around the kitchen like water through a riverbed. All of his motions were graceful, and his footfalls were so quiet that Ezra couldn’t even hear him walking. He just seemed to appear where he needed to be, and his gentle hands broke dry noodles and stirred the sauce with the sort of practiced ease that one might see in an executive chef. Ezra was transfixed by it all - he wasn’t much of a cook himself, but he loved eating and loved watching others cook - and was especially taken in by the way Crowley seemed to know exactly when to do certain things.

They didn’t talk at all during the meal preparation, and there was only a brief discussion over what kind of wine they’d be having (zinfandel, it turned out, because Ezra was partial to the combination of a nice zin and a good pasta). The beginning of dinner was spent in companionable silence, with Ezra glancing up at Crowley every once in a while and feeling his heart thrill at the sight of Crowley’s beautiful face without the sunglasses covering half of it. Finally, around halfway through the meal, Crowley leaned forward across his small dining table.

“Tell me a secret, Ezra.”

A line of things flashed through Ezra’s mind: Gabriel, asexuality, name of his first pet, favorite book in his bookshop… He put on a thoughtful face and gave himself a moment to clear his mind of any difficult-topic-related things, and eventually he found something interesting enough. “My first celebrity crush was Cary Grant. My mum used to watch old black-and-white films on the weekends for fun, and he was in a lot of them.”

“Really? Good choice.” Crowley grinned at him around a mouthful of pasta. “I like his films, mostly, but I don’t care for the mid-atlantic accent.”

Ezra made a face. “Oh, yes. That’s dreadful. I can’t believe they actually taught people to speak like that, it’s ridiculous.”

“Truly.” Busying himself with twirling a particularly slippery noodle around his fork, Ezra asked Crowley about his first celebrity crush, and Crowley started to smirk.

“Ah, I see. ‘Quid pro quo, Clarice,’” Crowley quoted, mimicking a high-pitched American accent and winking at Ezra.

“What?”

The sight of Crowley throwing his head back and laughing made Ezra have a greater appreciation for the pleasing aesthetic of Crowley’s jawline. “You’ll see in a few minutes. _The Silence of the Lambs_ , remember? It’s why you’re here.”

He would rather have died than admit this, of course, but Ezra had actually forgotten about the film. “Right, of course. Yes.”

Crowley refused to let Ezra help with the clean up, saying that he’d take care of it after. He grabbed the half-full bottle of wine off of the kitchen table and swaggered over to the sofa, setting the bottle down on his glass coffee table and sprawling his limbs out over three-quarters of the available sitting space. Ezra squeezed himself into the remaining couple of feet and tried to get comfortable (something he couldn’t manage to do as the couch was quite stiff and not nice to sit on), flashing Crowley a small smile.

And then the movie began, and Crowley immediately began giving warnings about blood and gore. Consequently, Ezra spent a good portion of the first thirty minutes of the film with his eyes shut, listening to Crowley tell him just enough to keep him informed of the plot about what disgusting thing was on the screen. At Clarice’s first meeting with Hannibal, Ezra couldn’t stop the little shiver of horror and fear that ran down his spine, and he saw a little smile creep onto Crowley’s lips.

Ezra had never been one to get sucked into films, really, but this one was an exception. He was on edge almost the entire time, holding his breath and closing his eyes, but he managed to keep his hands to himself until the end. The scene was dark and incredibly intense, and Ezra had almost stopped breathing entirely. His hand seemed to move of its own accord, and within a few seconds it had wrapped itself around Crowley’s. Their fingers were laced together, and when Crowley squeezed his hand comfortingly, Ezra’s focus on the film shattered completely. He barely saw the ending and only paid attention to the last lines because Crowley started mouthing it along with the actor.

As the credits rolled, Ezra’s touch-starved brain was misfiring, and he ended up snuggling himself ever-so-slightly into Crowley’s shoulder. A happy humming sound reverberated through Crowley’s thin chest, and they just sat together as the screen turned to black.

“So? What did you think?” Crowley hadn’t moved, so Ezra didn’t either. They were both still staring at the now-dark telly, hardly daring to breathe for fear of destroying the delicate intimacy of the moment.

“I liked it,” Ezra said after a few seconds. “Good acting.”

“ _Incredible_ acting.”

“Yes.” Ezra could hear Crowley’s heartbeat thumping against his ear, and he soaked in the sound and the smell of Crowley’s spicy cologne. He didn’t know how this had happened, exactly. For weeks, for _months_ , he’d been trying so hard to keep things platonic, and yet he still ended up with his head on Crowley’s shoulder and their fingers interlocked, not even caring that his palm was getting sweaty because he simply never wanted to let go. That last thought terrified Ezra, so he needed to switch to something less dangerous, something more safe. “I do have something to nitpick with Mister Lecter, though.”

Crowley laughed. “Just one thing?”

“Well, obviously I question the whole eating-people business that he’d got himself into, but I really do have a bone to pick with him over something that most people would deem insignificant.” Despite himself, Ezra smiled into Crowley’s shirt.

“Oh?”

“I question his decision to pair liver with Chianti, that’s all.”

Ezra had hoped Crowley would laugh. He’d expected that there would be a small, fond smile and a quick change of subject. He’d also thought it possible that Crowley would call him some rude-yet-affectionate name, and then they’d move on.

What he had _not_ anticipated was Crowley suddenly shifting so that they were nose to nose, the hot air of Crowley’s breath warming his lips and those two-toned eyes staring hopefully into his own. He saw it coming, the kiss, just a half a second before it happened, and he didn’t stop it. He didn’t say no. Instead, he melted into it, pressing his lips against Crowley’s, his unoccupied hand coming up to brace itself lightly against the curve of Crowley’s sharp cheekbone. The voice in his head that had been on Crowley’s side since the beginning burst into fervent cheering, but that was drowned out by the sound of blood rushing in his ears.

For one lovely, blissful moment, everything was as it should be. Time seemed to slow down or possibly even stop, and there was nothing but the soft, unhurried press of Crowley’s mouth on his.

And then, because all the good things in Ezra’s life inevitable seemed to come to an end - or, in this case, collapse into a pile of smoldering rubble - Crowley’s hand snuck around to the back of Ezra’s neck to pull him closer, and all of the lightness in Ezra’s chest was swallowed by the black gooey flow of guilt and shame and fear.

The last time someone had kissed him like that, with _inten_ t, that someone had been named Gabriel Simmons and that kiss had meant _“I know you don’t go in for sex, but right now I really wish you did.”_ Ezra hadn’t been in a serious relationship before Gabriel, and he certainly hadn’t been in one since, and so he didn’t know that this sort of behavior was pretty normal for people who kiss other people in healthy relationships. His traumatized brain registered Crowley’s kind touch to his neck as a very different, very possessive grip on the back of his head, and his mind dissolved into ringing alarm bells and flashing red lights.

He wrenched his face away, dropping Crowley’s hand like it had burned him and clambering to his feet. “No.” It was the only word he could think of to say, a monosyllabic rejection, and he saw the pain flash through Crowley’s wonderful eyes.

“Hey,” Crowley said, getting to his feet slowly, hands raised in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry. I just thought- you were- oh, _fuck_ , I just should have asked. I’m so sorry, Ezra.”

Ezra wasn’t thinking straight. His head was still a mess of panicked shouts and painful memories, so he stumbled backwards away from Crowley for a moment before turning and running out of the flat. Over the sound of his own pounding heartbeat, he heard the door to Crowley’s flat fly open a few moments after he’d left.

“Ezra!” Crowley called. “Ezra, _wait_ , please!”

He didn’t wait. He didn’t even slow down. For a man who hadn’t run for any purpose at all in the preceding few years, Ezra made excellent time. His lack of fitness was outweighed by the genuine fear running through his veins. Ezra didn’t remember climbing onto the bus that took him home, and he had no memory of unlocking the bookshop and collapsing onto his bed in his flat upstairs, either. The stupid invasive thoughts bouncing around his brain wouldn’t give him a moment to think or breathe or rest, and so he just lay on his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling until he finally fell asleep.

When Ezra woke in the morning, his face was damp with tears, but the maelstrom in his mind had gone quiet. It left him feeling hollow and broken, and the sound of Crowley calling his name rang in his ears. Quickly and silently, he tugged off his wrinkled clothes and tossed them into the laundry hamper, changing into his pyjamas. He walked downstairs and hung a “Closed - proprietor on vacation” sign in the window of the shop before returning to his flat and making himself a cup of tea.

It was the first time since Gabriel that tea hadn’t at least improved his mood. Ezra’s emotions were a tangled, knotted mess, and he didn’t know how to begin unraveling it. Thin strings of happiness at having kissed Crowley and regret at having left without an explanation were interwoven with the ball of coarse yarn of fear, pain, and grief that had been settling itself in his hollowed-out soul for the past six years. A tiny white thread of hope entered the mass from one side but had yet to come out of the other, which meant that it had gotten twisted up in some dark place and was unlikely to emerge from there anytime soon.

So Ezra made himself a second cup of tea (and winced when it was Earl Grey, thinking of Crowley even as the pain of it caused lightning to strike through his vision), and sat drinking it at his kitchen table.

“I’ve really bollocksed this up, haven’t I,” he said to his tea cup. “He’s never coming back, and he’s right not to. I can’t let myself be his burden to bear.” The tea cup, of course, said nothing. “He needs to let me go, and he needs to forget about me and find someone else, someone better. He is a wonderful man, and he deserves better than some pathetic, pining, broken-hearted old fool.”

Just as the words left his lips, the wall-mounted telephone in his bookshop rang, and his heart nearly stopped beating. It _had_ to be Crowley. No one else had scheduled a call, and Anathema had probably lost his phone number, so it was probably (definitely) Crowley. Ezra walked downstairs and stared at the phone as it rang, making no move to pick it up. Silently, he prayed that Crowley would leave him alone, that Crowley would understand the situation without it ever having been explained, that Crowley would go off and be happy with someone else. The little pro-Crowley voice in his head raised a hope that maybe Crowley would keep calling and keep trying until Ezra came to his senses and answered, but Ezra pushed that voice to the back of his mind and waited for the phone to go to voicemail. After a minute, it did just that, and a few seconds later the red light denoting an unheard message started to blink.

The opening line of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost came to Ezra’s mind as he stood in his bookshop staring at the voicemail light. He could listen to it, and he could call Crowley back and explain everything, or he could go back upstairs and finish his tea and try to hide from everything that had gone so catastrophically wrong in the last twelve hours. His fingers twitched in the direction of the phone, but he’d made up his mind.

The phone rang four more times that day, a voicemail left every time. Before he went to bed, Ezra yanked the cord out of the wall, listening as the line went dead. It was cruel, doing this to Crowley, and Ezra knew that. But something inside of him told him it would be crueler _not_ to do this, and that voice was louder than any other as a consequence of being bolstered by Ezra’s own self-deprecating talk over the years. So, oblivious to the agitated sleep-deprived state of a certain dark-haired man across the city in Mayfair, Ezra Fell curled up under the covers with a book, trying desperately and to no avail to block out the gnawing silence of the world around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. I'm so, SO sorry.


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra is forced to stop hiding and moping about, and he gets some encouragement from a friend. He also manages to call Crowley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oi, hello! It's been a quick second since I last updated, sorry about that! This chapter is a BEAST (we're talking like 5,000+ words here, ladies/gents/they-dies/gentle-them), but I couldn't bring myself to break it up because I'd promised y'all that we'd start to see some work toward reconciliation here. 
> 
> So, as a result of what happened in Chapter Seven, this one is still on the angsty side, but it's in a way that's productive (mostly). Ezra's still a self-deprecating idiot, but mostly there are just FEELINGS here and he is really really bad at those. Anathema saves the day, because she's a badass and *duh*, and we get to see the first post-kiss-breakdown interaction between the ineffable fellas. 
> 
> To all y'all who've been keeping up with this story for a little while: thank you!! You are incredible and I'm so floored by your praise and kindness. To anyone who's just started reading and is playing catch-up: hi! Welcome to my long-ass, rambling, adjective-heavy corner of Ao3! I hope you're enjoying the story, and I'd love to hear from you! 
> 
> heads up here for language and Ezra being a self-deprecating fool (we just gotta love him through it all, y'know?)

“Ezra!” _Thunk._ “Ezra, open the door, you idiot.” _Thump._

He was standing stock-still in the middle of his bookshop staring in bewilderment at his front door. It had been a few days since the film-night-gone-horribly-wrong, and Ezra had spent them wallowing in grief, drinking copious amounts of tea, and relieving the freezer of its ice cream contents. The thought of getting dressed properly had stopped being appealing after the first day or so, and so his hair was disheveled and uncombed and he was wearing an old dressing gown over his softest pair of pyjamas. And now, for some untold reason, Anathema Device was outside his bookshop demanding to be let in.

Some more pounding made Ezra jump, and Anathema’s voice floated through the crack in the door. “Okay, mate. I know you’re not really on holiday - Mr. Levins across the street watches your shop like a hawk because he hates you, and he hasn’t seen you come out since you got home really late a few nights ago.” Ezra didn’t answer, hoping that she would go away, but he didn’t have any such luck. “Open this door _right now_ , Ezra Fell, or I swear to God I will pick the lock or pry it open with a crowbar!”

That was a good enough threat to get Ezra to move (he was very attached to his front door - it was a lovely dark-stained cherry wood, and he’d picked it out himself), so he trudged over and opened it just enough to poke the top of his head around the corner. “Hello,” he said, trying for a small smile.

She pushed the door open, ignoring his huffed protests, and slammed it shut behind her. “Blimey, Ezra! I thought you’d gone and fucking died or something.” It occurred to Ezra that Anathema was the second person who’d assumed that he’d died just because he hadn’t checked in a few days, and he found himself wondering if he gave people the impression that his death was imminent or if his friends were just particularly dramatic.

Ezra tried for a haughty sniff, but it didn’t have quite the same effect without his usual snobbish bowtie-straightening, and he felt a little defeated. “I haven’t died.”

“Clearly,” Anathema said, jumping up onto the checkout counter and tucking her legs underneath her like a child. “Although, to be honest, you don’t look far from it.” Ezra glared at her.

“What are you doing here?” She hadn’t been to the shop too many times before, and when she had, it was usually only for a brief period of time and it had _never_ been unannounced, so Ezra was far beyond confused.

Anathema gave him something that was a cross between a smile and a grimace. “I had an interesting visitor at the bakery today.” At that, Ezra’s broken heart sank down into his bare feet.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Let’s see: tall, skinny jeans and a leather jacket, dark hair… oh, right, he also had a jawline that could cut glass and was wearing sunglasses and went by the name of Crowley.”

Ezra didn’t reply, and he wandered into his back room in search of something with which to bribe Anathema into leaving and came back with some tea bags from the emergency stash in his desk - he was out of the good looseleaf stuff upstairs, but he needed _something_ to drink if they were going to have this conversation. “Oh. Came by, did he?”

“Yes,” Anathema said, sliding off the counter and following him as he headed upstairs to boil some water for the tea. “He was looking for you, but then he and I got to talking.” In spite of his best efforts, Ezra’s breath caught a little. Crowley apparently cared enough to go looking for him in a place that he’s only mentioned a couple of times. Ezra wasn’t actually sure that he’d ever mentioned the specific name of the bakery he loved so much, which meant that unless Crowley was extraordinarily lucky, he must have spent some significant time searching through various Soho bakeries in order to find the one at which Anathema worked.

Ezra rolled his eyes and put the kettle on. “And what, perchance, did the two of you have to talk about?” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded flat and lifeless, and he hated himself for letting the kiss-and-run situation affect him that much.

“You, you daft idiot.” This was the answer he’d been expecting, but Ezra still sighed and occupied himself with opening the tea bags and tearing the paper into little pieces. His lack of response prompted Anathema to continue. “He knew my name as soon as he saw me, actually. Said you’d talked about me - very sweet, by the way, I’m touched - and asked if you’d come in lately. I said no, and he looked really distraught.”

He couldn’t stop himself from turning around and looking his friend in the eye to see if she was joking. She wasn’t. “Did he tell you what happened?”

“No. He didn’t think it was his place to do so.”

Silently, Ezra shot a prayer of thanks up to whoever was listening. Crowley hadn’t gossipped. He hadn’t taken the opportunity to embarrass Ezra in front of Ezra’s other friends, which is something that Gabriel had never had the courtesy to avoid doing. The tiny white string of hope in his knotted-up soul made a little progress out of the darkness. But, because he was still feeling like sulking and was trying very hard to get rid of Anathema (although he was making her a cup of tea because he wasn’t _rude_ ), he just shrugged and said, “Good.”

“He did say that he’d been by your shop a few times and seen the sign, and he wondered if it was true.” Anathema took the proffered cup of tea with a nod of thanks. “I told him that in all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never once seen you take a real holiday.”

“Thanks for that.”

“Ezra, he’s _worried_ about you.”

Ezra sighed into his tea. He’d run out of milk the day before and was now deeply regretting not going to the shop to buy some more. “He shouldn’t be.”

“Oh no.” Anathema’s hand was suddenly on top of his, and he flinched away. “Ezra, what happened? Did you tell him about-”

“ _No_.”

“Seriously, mate. You clearly need to talk to someone about this, so talk to me.”

“If I tell you, will you leave me alone?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. No promises.” He glared at her, but she didn’t change her answer and instead started glaring back, and he knew that he was beaten (and that she was right - he _did_ need to talk to someone).

Ezra took a deep breath and another sip of his tea, setting the cup gently in its saucer and folding his hands together in his lap. “Do you remember me telling you on Tuesday morning that he’d invited me over to watch a film?” Anathema nodded. “I went. And it was lovely, really, right until the end. He made dinner, and I asked him to take off his sunglasses - his eyes are _beautiful_ , Anathema. They’re different colors and it scares some people, which is why he wears the sunglasses all the time, but I really love them - and we watched the film. I sort of… well, I was a bit frightened at the end, so I grabbed his hand, and he didn’t let go and neither did I.”

“Oooh,” interrupted Anathema. “You held his hand?”

He flushed. “Yes, dear girl. Would you mind being quiet for a moment? I’m trying to- it’s difficult to talk about- I’d like to finish, please.”

“Sorry.”

“Right, so we were holding hands, and he asked me how I liked the film. I made a silly comment about something, and for some reason he turned around and leaned in and kissed me as soon as I’d said it.” Anathema drew in a sharp breath but didn’t say anything. “And I kissed him back, for a moment. I didn’t go to his flat intending to wind up locking lips with him, but it happened.”

The next part of the story was the most important, but he couldn’t quite figure out how to say it, so the words got stuck on the edge of his tongue in a jumbled-up mess. Anathema took this as a cue that he was done talking. “You kissed him? Why does a kiss make you sulk around for days and hide from the sunlight and drink all of your good tea?”

“Because of what happened after.”

She blinked at him. “What happened after?”

A small dark knot in the wood of the kitchen table suddenly became far more fascinating than it had at any other point in its existence, and as such it was the thing on the receiving end of Ezra’s confession. “He reached around and cupped the back of my head, which reminded me of Gabriel, and I panicked,” Ezra said to the knot. He mustered up the courage to look back at Anathema, who was watching him with growing concern. “The whole evening was sort of reminiscent of Gabriel, actually. I’ve been thinking about it for days. When I kissed him, he tasted like tomato sauce and zinfandel, which is what I’d brought for dinner the night that I found out about Gabriel’s… extra-relational cavorting.”

“You can call it cheating, Ezra.” The words sounded like a reprimand, but the voice that said them was calm and soft. Ezra recognized this tone of voice as the same one Anathema had used to calm him down the last time he’d been stressed out about Gabriel-and-Crowley related things, and for some reason that made him feel a little better. He’d finally found a friend who knew how to calm him down.

“Cheating, then,” Ezra conceded. “So, Crowley tasted like my worst memories, and it was my first proper kiss since everything… _happened_. And I’m not sure if he was trying to be kind or just get a better angle on the kiss, but his hand on my head really just threw me back into a time when I was with a man who wanted things from me that I didn’t want - wasn’t able - to give.”

Anathema appeared to be processing all of this, both cups of tea on the table growing cold as she did so. “You said you panicked. What exactly does that mean?”

“I ran.”

One of her eyebrows formed a pretty little arch on her forehead. “What?”

Ezra stared at his lap. “I broke the kiss, and I told him no, and I just _ran_. I had to get out of there.”

“Why?”

“Because he was _there_!” If you had asked anyone who knew Ezra well, they would have told you that he rarely, if ever, raised his voice. This was the exception, apparently, because he’d become so flustered that he’d risen from the table and was pacing, almost shouting at the girl who’d come by to talk and listen. “He was just standing there, looking like he thought he’d done something wrong - he _apologized_ , even - and he was all sharp cheekbones and pinked-up lips and mismatched bloody eyes with a bloody _star_ in one of them. And I couldn’t tell him why I’d started to panic. My thoughts were too loud, and he looked _perfect_ , and I couldn’t bring myself to put a stain on that beauty.”

Anathema was up from her chair and had her arms wrapped around Ezra so fast that he was certain she’d bent the laws of space and time. She pulled him close, stopping his pacing and laying her head against his shoulder.

“You’ve got to stop saying nasty things like that about my best friend, Ezra Fell, or I’ll have to kick your ass for it,” she finally said, forcing some acidity into her voice. Ezra chuckled a little, but she squeezed him harder to show she meant what she said, and he stopped.

“It’s true, though. I’d… ruin him.”

With an exasperated sigh and a final tight squeeze, Anathema pulled away and led him into his small sitting room, pushing him gently into a chair and taking the one opposite it. “Here’s the thing, though. You’re not nearly as broken as you think you are, babe. Something horrible - some _one_ horrible - happened to you, and you’ve never let yourself heal from that.”

Ezra scoffed. “I’ve got baggage, though. And he shouldn’t have to deal with that.”

“He said he tried to call, that he left messages, and that eventually your phone line was disconnected. So he tried to come by the shop, and when he couldn’t reach you that way, he tried to find you at your favorite places for _days_ until he wound up finding me at the bakery.”

“So?” He knew he was being petulant and childish, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

“ _So_ , you daft man, he wants to talk to you. He’s trying to find you because he fucking _cares_ about you, alright? Someone who didn’t want to at least try and stick around would _never_ have put in the effort he has.” Anathema was looking at him like she was trying to poke around inside his head and take a peek at his thoughts. “You ran out, Ezra. I understand why, but he doesn’t. You might want to be rid of him, but you should give him some sort of explanation first. If nothing else, the man is your friend, and he’s really worried about you.”

Loathe as he was to admit it, Ezra could see that she had a bit of a point. “I’ve been a coward.”

“Yeah, a bit.”

“I should explain it to him, and if he wants nothing to do with me after that, then at least I’ll know.” He hadn’t thought that his insides could clench up any tighter, but the thought of Crowley finding out about his past and then leaving did that to him.

“Yeah, you should.” A beat, and then “But I don’t think he’s going to run, Ezra. Genuinely, I don’t.”

“He will. I would.”

She kept staring at him. “Would you, though? If he came to you with a story like yours, would you run from him?”

“No, of course not.”

There was a hint of a smile on Anathema’s lips, but she tried to smother it. “Why?”

“Because he matters to me, my dear. That’s not news.”

“Yeah, Ezra. And it seems an awful lot like _you_ matter to _him_.” The smile made its way onto her face despite her best efforts, and Ezra couldn’t help feeling a little bit hopeful that she might be right. “One of you is a commitment-phobe in this… dunno, thing you two have got going, and it’s not Crowley.”

Ezra sighed and ran a hand through his curls, picking up the cold cups of tea and dumping their contents into the sink. He’d never had to explain a panicked reaction to a man he fancied before because Gabriel didn’t care, and there hadn’t been anyone else, so he found himself floundering a bit when he thought about how to broach the subject with Crowley. A few minutes went by, during which time he had managed to wash all of the dirty dishes that had accumulated by the sink over the past few days and work himself into a nervous frenzy. When he turned around, Anathema was still sitting at his kitchen table, sending a text message to someone and looking rather bored.

“Oh,” Ezra said on reflex.

“You’d forgot that I was here, hadn’t you?” Anathema shot him a teasing smile and rolled her eyes affectionately. She was right on the money; he _had_ forgotten, and his cheeks went slightly pink in embarrassment, which was enough of an answer to make Anathema start laughing.

“Lost in thought.”

“Aren’t you always?” A slight giggle still tinged her words. “Sorry. What are you thinking about?”

Hands suddenly dish-less, Ezra started tugging at the tag on the end of his dish towel. “I… I don’t know how to talk to him about this.”

“Start by calling him, mate. Don’t do it over the phone, but ask to meet somewhere - you could invite him here, or you could go there, or you could pick a neutral location like a coffee shop.”

“Right,” Ezra said. “What if he doesn’t answer my call?”

“He will.”

“How do you know?”

Anathema grinned at him. “I told him to expect a call. Promised I’d do my best to figure out what had happened, and that at the very least _I’d_ call and let him know if you were alive if you didn’t want to do it yourself.”

Ezra tried for an irritated glare, but it came out as something closer to a thankful smile. He figured it was close enough.

“Thank you for coming by, dear girl. And for talking to me, and for helping.” This time it was Ezra who hugged Anathema, holding her close and giving her their customary kiss on the cheek, which she returned. “I really must ask you to leave, now, though. I’ve got to make myself presentable.”

A wry smile settled itself on Anathema’s lips. “Oh? Why’s that, then? Got a handsome bloke to impress?”

“Goodbye, Anathema,” Ezra said firmly. She laughed, kissed him once more on the cheek, and made her way downstairs. The door slammed shut behind her after a few moments, and Ezra turned to the task at hand. Because Ezra was a prim-and-proper type of man, he couldn’t even stomach the idea of picking up the phone until he’d at least made some sort of an effort to rectify the abysmal state of his hair and select a decent outfit, and so that was what he did.

A shower was a much-needed first order of business, and that was over and done with fairly quickly. He pulled on a pair of beige trousers and tucked in a blue shirt, topping it with a plain navy bowtie and an argyle pullover. As a final thought, he put some mousse in his hair and slipped into a pair of worn loafers.

The whole affair took less than a half hour, but during that time his anxiety had nearly tripled. In the end, the only reason he plugged his phone back in and punched in Crowley’s number was the sinking feeling in his gut that Anathema would come over later and cause him some serious bodily harm if he didn’t. As the phone began to ring, his pulse quickened even more, and he felt a little like he might pass out.

_“Hey.”_

Ezra had thought that he’d be ready to talk to Crowley. This was, evidently, not the case at all. One word, one _syllable_ in Crowley’s melodic voice set his blood ablaze, and he felt the burn of a blush on his cheeks.

“H-hello,” he managed to choke out after a moment. “How are you?”

The pause following that question was long enough to make Ezra wonder if the phone had disconnected on accident again (he checked to make sure and was disappointed to see the cord in its proper place). Finally, _“I’m bloody fucking awful, thank you for asking.”_

“Oh.” Sucker punch to the gut, those words, but a well-deserved one.

_“How are you?”_

“Much the same.” Ezra stopped for a moment, searching for the breath that had suddenly decided to vanish from his lungs. “I… I need to apologize, and I need to explain. Can you- would you mind coming by the shop?” The words had scarcely left his lips when there was a clattering sound from the other end of the line (Crowley had tossed his phone onto the counter in the rush to put on his boots).

 _“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Eight if I’m lucky on lights.”_ A click, and then the line buzzed with static and the dial tone, and Ezra was very grateful that he’d had the foresight to get dressed and ready before calling Crowley.

It was precisely six-and-a-half minutes later that there was a light tapping on Ezra’s front door. Wincing and trying not to think about how many people might have had near-death experiences in those short few minutes, Ezra opened the door and made a lame gesture with one of his hands to invite Crowley inside.

His first thought was that Crowley looked terrible. Those horrid sunglasses were askew on his face, and his normally perfectly-coiffed dark hair was frizzy and untamed. He had an old Beatles t-shirt on under a faded leather jacket, and he was wearing light-wash jeans. One of his boots was brown, and the other was black, and as far as Ezra could tell, he wasn’t wearing any socks. All told, Crowley looked as broken down and distraught as Ezra felt, which was something of a strange comfort.

Ezra shut the door with a soft click and turned to face Crowley, wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers in a way that he thought was discreet but very much wasn’t. “Thanks for coming.”

“Thanks for calling.” Crowley’s voice was the only part of him that seemed normal. It still sounded silky and casual, betraying no evidence of his clear emotional distress. He didn’t say anything else, just stood stiffly between stacks of books and hardly seemed to be breathing.

“How’s Adam?” The tense silence was killing Ezra, but he still wasn’t sure how to approach the topics of sexuality and prior relationship trauma, so a small-talk question was the best he could come up with.

Crowley shrugged. “Talked to him yesterday. He’s doing great, wants to come up and see me this weekend.”

“That’s nice,” Ezra said, hating the forced politeness in both of their voices. They’d never been like this. There had been the typical awkwardness initially, sure, but even their first conversation had flowed more naturally than this, and Ezra was in a hospital bed with multiple broken bones when that had happened.

“He asked about you.” It was a flat and emotionless statement, but Crowley shivered a little.

“Ah.”

“I said I’d ask. He asked me why I didn’t know.”

Ezra gulped. “What did you say?”

“That I’d hurt your feelings but that I was trying to make it better.” Another shiver. Ezra noticed that Crowley’s lovely hands were balled up into fists and shaking with barely-controlled emotion, and he resisted the urge to take one of those hands in his.

It took a few seconds for the meaning of Crowley’s response sunk in, and Ezra’s stomach twisted. “You didn’t hurt my feelings, Crowley.”

Strangely, Crowley flinched. “Why do you call me that?”

 _Because it suits you. Because I like the way it sounds. Because it’s the first word I think of when I get up in the morning and the last one I think of when I go to bed at night. Because I love you, but I wish I didn’t because I’m afraid of hurting you, and using your surname keeps you at a distance._ Although all of those thoughts were true, none of them seemed to quite fit the mood, and so Ezra gave the simplest reason instead.

“You’ve never told me to call you anything else, my dear.” Those last two words slipped out without Ezra’s permission. They were natural, and they had never been a problem before. _Before_. Before the pasta and the wine, before seeing Crowley’s eyes, before the kiss, before running away and avoidance and days of radio silence.

“You know my name, Ezra.”

He swallowed hard. “Yes. Adam calls you Uncle AJ.”

Crowley grunted in assent and fidgeted around a little, which made Ezra remember that they were still standing next to the front door and that the back room was a much better place for a conversation like this. Ezra moved toward the back, motioning for Crowley to follow. When they got there, Crowley sat on the sofa in a strange way (which meant, of course, the way that most people sit on sofas. It was strange because Crowley didn’t _sit_ on sofas - he sprawled out) and avoided looking at Ezra, who had sat down in a chair.

“Do you… do you want me to call you AJ?” The name thing was still unresolved, and Ezra hated leaving things unfinished.

“I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do.”

“It just - I don’t know, really. I’ve never thought of you and thought ‘AJ,’ I’ve always thought ‘Crowley.’ That might be because it’s how you first introduced yourself, or maybe I just like it…” Ezra trailed off.

“We should talk about something else,” Crowley said quickly.

The hatred for his dark glasses that Ezra had developed over the past few weeks and months returned with a vengeance. He hated not being able to see Crowley’s eyes for a couple of reasons: first, that he wanted to look Crowley in the eye for this conversation; second, that he’d been dreaming of Crowley’s eyes and wanted to see them again; third, that he felt exposed and raw and didn’t like that Crowley could hide behind those blasted lenses. Ezra knew that he was in no position to be making demands, but he made one anyway.

“Would you mind letting me see your eyes? Just for this.”

Scowling, Crowley took off his sunglasses and tucked them into one of his jacket’s many pockets. “Better?”

“Yes, de- never mind. Thank you.”

Now that the time had come for words, all of the ones Ezra had planned to say were nowhere to be found. On any given day, Ezra Fell had a Webster’s-dictionary-level vocabulary and was nearly as good as any thesaurus. But when it counted, when it _mattered_ , his words deserted him, and he couldn’t even find enough of them to explain _that_ to Crowley.

This quickly became a bit of a problem.

“What the _fuck_ is going on, Ezra?” Crowley snarled, eyes flashing, after Ezra had sat in silence for a minute too long.

One of the emotions that Crowley had been trying to hold in check was anger, and it was also the one that bubbled most quickly to the surface. It wasn’t that he was angry at Ezra for pulling away from the kiss or even for running out of the flat, as he knew enough from past relationships and conversations with students to recognize a trauma-fueled response when he saw one. No, Crowley was a little angry that Ezra had tried to shut him out, but he was mostly angry at whatever or whoever had hurt Ezra badly enough to cause a Chernobyl-like disaster from one quick kiss.

Ezra, of course, knew none of this, and so Crowley’s anger terrified him. “I- I’m sorry, I just don’t know where to start.”

Crowley visibly softened. “No, hang on, _shit_. I shouldn’t have snapped, I’m just…I was so fucking worried, Ezra, and I’ve been a mess, and I’ve just got a big jumble of thoughts and emotions. I’m not angry with _you_ , I promise.”

This was not entirely convincing. It probably should have been, but Ezra’s paranoid brain was telling him to bolt, that Crowley would be the same type of angry and dismissive man that Gabriel had been, so he just stared wide-eyed at Crowley in lieu of responding verbally.

“Fuck, I’m an idiot. I’m sorry, Ezra, I’m _so_ sorry. I’ve got a bit of a temper, I always have, but I’ve been doing better at keeping it in check lately. This is all just a lot, for you especially, and it’s killing me not to know what’s going on.” Crowley was getting slightly out of breath, and his bicolored eyes were huge and pleading. “I shouldn’t have gotten angry. Please, please forgive me. Please just… help me understand, Ezra.”

Shakily, Ezra took a breath and gave Crowley a shaky small smile. “I think I’m as much an emotional trainwreck as you, if not more, so I understand the feeling. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you - well, that’s not precisely true. I don’t, but only because I wish I didn’t have to. It’s too soon to be having to talk about this; I didn’t even get to say- to ask you how- to give you any happiness before all of this mess broke out into the open.”

“Oh, for someone’s sake, Ezra. Being around you makes me happier than I’ve been in, I don’t know, months? Years? Ever? I don’t care about your mess, mate. Everyone’s got one. I just want you to _talk to me_ about it, whatever you can manage to tell me, because I can’t help you fight demons that you won’t let me see.”

“There’s a lot.” Ezra begged himself to stop protesting, to just start talking and get it over with, but his mouth had other ideas.

Crowley sighed. “Then give me a lot. Because right now, and since Tuesday night, I’ve just been thinking that I did something horrible. I figure I must have, and I’ve run that night over and over in my head and for the life of me I can’t figure out what it was. But you said, earlier, that I didn’t hurt your feelings, so I’m at a loss.”

“You’re sure you want to know?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll hate me, or at the very least, you’ll look at me differently.”

“I could never hate you. And different isn’t always bad.”

“This is.”

“Ezra, I will literally get down on my knees and start begging if you don’t help me understand what happened that night.” That conjured a mental image that made Ezra start to laugh, which made Crowley smile at him before saying, “I’m not joking, I’ll do it.”

He only stopped laughing when Crowley shifted forward, clearly intending to make good on that promise. “No, stop, stay where you are.”

“You’ll tell me?”

“I’ll tell you.”

One of Crowley’s long arms crept over the back of the sofa. Not quite normal Crowley behavior, but something closer to it, and Ezra smiled. And then, both because he had no other choice and because he needed to, Ezra started talking.


	9. Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley and Ezra talk about Ezra's past, and Crowley eventually manages to tell Ezra how important he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd usually write a long note, but it's super late where I am, so I'm gonna keep it short. I stayed up to finish this because a TON of y'all told me how excited you were to see it, so I hope that it meets those expectations! As with the last chapter, this one is pretty dialogue-heavy, but it's necessary. There's some very very mild angst here, but we're transitioning to fluffy stuff now. 
> 
> Thanks for all of the love on this fic! I appreciate all of you. 
> 
> heads up for language (like, a lot of it because Crowley is Crowley).

Crowley had very expressive eyes. Not very many people knew this due to the fact that he kept them covered by his sunglasses nearly all of the time, and his typical nonchalance gave the people around him the impression that he wasn’t a very emotional sort of bloke. This impression was, Ezra discovered quickly, one hundred percent incorrect. Crowley most definitely had feelings, and quite strong ones at that. His facial expressions may not have betrayed those emotions, but Ezra was a little bit terrified by the sheer force of the anger that was currently locked in Crowley’s eyes.

Ezra had just finished telling Crowley about what had happened with Gabriel, leaving out the part about his anti-desire for sex (he’d decided that was something that could be addressed at a later date if necessary), and Crowley had been quiet and listened without interrupting throughout the whole story. Because Ezra was used to talking to Anathema, who interrupted whenever she saw fit unless Ezra asked her not to, he wasn’t used to having someone who would just sit and listen until he had finished talking, and thus he wasn’t entirely sure what to do now. Luckily, Crowley spared him the trouble of having to fret about it too much longer.

“I want to kill him.”

To the best of Ezra’s recollection, a statement like that usually was said in anger but tinged with something like hesitation or sarcasm or even a certain level of forced acidity. This time, it wasn’t. It was said in the same way that another person might have said “It’s raining outside” or “I live in London.” Point-blank, flat, and utterly factual. Had Crowley been wearing his sunglasses, Ezra might have thought that Crowley was uninterested, even bored. But Crowley _wasn’t_ wearing them, and so Ezra could clearly see that the blues and golds and dark blackish-brown colors in his friend’s eyes had ceased being as soft and fascinating as they’d been in the past. At the moment, they had hardened into shards of sapphire and amber and obsidian, and they were simultaneously beautiful and downright terrifying. Crowley was, for lack of a better description, on the brink of raining hellfire and brimstone down upon Gabriel.

“I’ve been there myself, oddly enough,” Ezra said lightly, trying for a mildly sarcastic joke. It didn’t help. Crowley kept looking at him with those beautifully horrible stone-hard eyes, and Ezra couldn’t suppress a shiver. God help anyone who got on this guy’s bad side.

Without blinking, Crowley took a slow, calming breath. “I realize that threatening murder might not be the best thing to say when I’m trying to get you to trust me, but I literally couldn’t think of anything else to say.”

Ezra laughed. “It’s safe to say that I trust you, my dear boy. I’ve just told you something that only a handful of people on this planet know about. That being said, I do appreciate the sentiment. It means a lot that you’d risk jail just to take out my ex-boyfriend.” Another poor attempt at a joke, another failure at getting Crowley to crack a smile.

“You’ve _got_ to stop calling him your ex-boyfriend, Ezra. It’s far too tame.” And there, for the first time since Ezra had finished his story, a healthy amount of venom had entered Crowley’s voice. He hadn’t so much said the words as spat them out, and this made Ezra’s stomach do a funny sort of flop. Protectiveness, that was new.

“What should I call him, then? He is, in fact, actually my ex-boyfriend, so that’s a proper descriptor for him.”

Crowley’s sharp eyes flashed. “Oh, I dunno. Bastard. Prick. Asshole. Self-centered self-serving narcissist. Good-for-nothing pond scum. The type of bloke who deserves to get rear-ended every time he stops at a fucking stop sign. Fuckwad. Shitshow. The actual worst human being to ever walk the ea-”

“Okay, alright.” Ezra cut him off because his breaths had started coming in angry puffs and gasps, and Ezra was getting concerned. “I think I get the idea.”

“Good.”

Crowley fell silent again, clearly thinking very hard about something, so Ezra brushed a piece of lint off of his trousers and waited for something else to be said. After a minute or two, he decided to break the tension himself, so he asked a question. “Do you… I don’t know, do you understand now?”

“Some things.”

That was not the answer Ezra had been looking for. He’d been hoping that Crowley would say yes and that they could move on to talking about more important things, like how Ezra really fancied Crowley and would very much like to discuss the possibility of dating (which would, of course, inevitably lead to talking about the other Very Important Thing that Ezra had left out of his initial explanation). Also, that noncommittal answer was making the traitorous side of his mind start thinking some truly terrible things, and so he was anxious to get away from the topic of Gabriel as soon as possible. But, because Ezra knew that the point of this whole bloody conversation was to tell Crowley the truth in order to explain things, he knew that he had to at least try to clarify whatever Crowley wanted to know.

“Erm, right. What don’t you understand?” He’d meant for it to sound patient, but it sounded incredibly nervous, and Crowley’s eyes softened a little more when he recognized that.

“It’s just one thing, really,” Crowley said softly. “It’s not your fault, this thing I’m confused about, so please don’t hear me blaming you for what happened to you.”

Ezra’s heart dropped into his shoes. “Okay.”

“Why did you love him so much?”

 _That_ was not the question Ezra had feared, and so he didn’t know how to respond. “What?”

“Gabriel. Why did you love him so much? He sounds fucking _awful_. He didn’t care about you, and he was patronising towards you about everything, and he just wanted you around so he could show you off like some kind of prize poodle. And he _cheated on you_. For months. With some other equally pond-scum-esque pillock.” Tan hands tugged at messy dark hair. “I just… can’t get my head around why someone like you would love someone like that.”

“Because he said that he loved me. And because he was wonderful, sometimes. Sometimes he would bring me flowers or chocolates or a new kind of tea, or he would take me out to dinner at nice restaurants and call me sweet things in public. He was the first person I’d been around who wasn’t ashamed to be gay and who wanted to be with me, and he was handsome and charming.” Ezra paused, flicking his gaze down to his lap to avoid looking at Crowley as he continued. “Gabriel said all of the right things, you know? He told me that he’d love me forever, that he’d love me in spite of certain… broken parts of me. When I was sad or upset, he held me and made me feel safe. He’d let me read to him if I asked, and he laughed at my stupid jokes sometimes, and he was something… something solid. Someone to be there, someone for me to love without worrying that I was doing something wrong.”

“Okay,” Crowley said after a moment. “I get that you can’t control who you love, and I guess your prick of a cheating-bastard ex had some decent things going for him on occasion. But… you get that some of those things - even the things you thought were good, things that made you love him - aren’t enough to constitute real love, right?”

“How do you mean?”

Agitated and buzzing with nervous energy, Crowley jumped up from the sofa and started pacing in front of Ezra’s chair. “Someone who really loves you doesn’t love you _in spite of_ the broken things about you; they love you regardless of what’s broken, and they help to fix it if they can. They do nice things more often than _sometimes_ , and they say lovely things to you in private as well as in public. They show you that they love you by _loving_ you, not just by bringing you things and allowing you to do the things you love only when you ask.” Crowley was flustered, his hands now permanently buried in his hair. “And Gabriel wasn’t solid, Ezra. Not even close. He was _hollow_. Strong on the outside, maybe, but empty on the inside.”

Seeing Crowley so distraught was doing funny things to Ezra’s brain, and so he wasn’t thinking clearly. He’d never have said what he did if he’d had his head on straight, but the words fell from his lips anyway.

“That might be true, Crowley, but Gabriel was as close as I’ve ever been to loving and being loved in return, and he’s probably more than I deserved.”

“You _can’t_ mean that. Please, please tell me you don’t actually believe that.” Crowley had very abruptly stopped pacing, and his mouth fell open just a bit in shock.

Ezra tried to deny it, tried to pass it off as something stupid said in the heat of an emotional moment, but the words wouldn’t come. He couldn’t do anything but look at Crowley as Crowley looked at him, and the sadness and compassion in Crowley’s eyes made him want to disappear into the ether.

“Okay,” Crowley mumbled, yanking his hands out of his hair and shoving them into his pockets. “I need to get out of this tiny little room because it’s stuffy in here, and I also really need to show you something, so you need to come with me.”

“Is that a good idea?”

Crowley shrugged. “Probably not. Come on.” And then he grabbed Ezra’s hand and pulled him to his feet, dragging Ezra through the bookshop and out of the front door without so much as a word of apology or explanation. Within seconds, the Bentley was unlocked, and both men were sitting in the front seats.

The drive was actually safe (because Crowley was distracted and therefore wasn’t paying attention, which meant his driving school training kicked in and he actually followed traffic laws), but Ezra got gradually more and more nervous the further they went from Soho. Eventually, the car slid neatly into a parking space in the empty faculty car park of the university where Crowley worked.

“What are we doing here?” Ezra was almost jogging to keep up with Crowley’s much longer legs.

“I need to show you something.” This, Ezra thought, was not in the least helpful, but he shut his mouth while Crowley led him through a maze of hallways until they stopped in front of an unassuming wooden door. The plaque to the right read _Anthony J. Crowley, Ph.D._

It wasn’t a large room, but it was full of things that looked like they belonged in the office of some sorcerer or magician. Among them, Ezra recognized an armillary sphere, and he started to smile in spite of himself. It was much homier than the Mayfair flat, and the blanket-covered futon against one wall proved that this was probably where Crowley spent a majority of his time. The room was practically bursting with things, but somehow Crowley had managed to keep it clean and orderly. Everything from the angle of the telescope against the back window to the placement of books on the shelves next to the antique desk looked intentional. Mostly, though, Ezra thought that the room was exquisitely _Crowley_ , and so he loved it.

“This is wonderful,” Ezra murmured. “Beautiful.”

“Thank you.” The office door clicked shut, and Crowley slipped silently though the room toward the bookshelf, running his fingers along the spines of several books before finding what he’d evidently been looking for. “Come over here, will you?”

Ezra joined Crowley at the desk, where the book lay open as Crowley leafed through it, muttering under his breath as he did so. It looked to be full of drawings and poems and short stories, which seemed odd for an astronomy professor.

“Crowley,” Ezra said softly. “What is this all about?”

A few more moments of muttering before “Ah! Here.”

At first glance, the page seemed to be almost entirely black, with white words stamped onto it. But, upon further examination, navy and dark plum and charcoal grey were highlighted in the black, forming the shape of a person around the words.

“You are stardust,” Ezra read aloud.

Crowley was fidgeting around, as usual, and his eyes were flicking around nervously when Ezra finally looked up from the book.

“Do you get it?”

Blushing a little, Ezra shook his head.

“Right, I should explain. ‘You are stardust’ refers to the Big Bang, and while it’s not a precisely scientifically accurate phrase, it gets the point across. Basically, what it means is this: everything that exists in the universe came from what was essentially an exploding star - although that’s oversimplified, because it was a space-time singularity, but that’s not the point - and since _you_ exist in the universe, _you_ come from that same exploding star. Which means that-”

“I’m stardust,” Ezra finished, smiling. “Right.”

“So, yeah. I like this book - it was put together by people like me who love astronomy, and they just collected art and writing and things from artists and writers, and would up with that. But I wanted to show you this page because… because I need you to understand how much you matter, and I didn’t know how to say that back in the bookshop.”

Ezra nearly swallowed his tongue. “Come again?”

“You said that you probably didn’t even deserve the halfway love, the fucked-up love that Gabriel gave you.” Crowley was staring at Ezra again, those eyes boring holes into Ezra’s skull. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m really not.”

An annoyed huffing sound rose from Crowley’s throat. “Ezra, I swear to whatever you think is holy that I don’t mean this the way it sounds, but _please_ just shut up.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine, just… I’m trying to say something very important here, and if you keep on with this self-deprecating shit, I’m going to have to stop saying this important thing in order to get you to pull your head out of your ass, and that’s just a great bloody waste of time because you could just listen to the thing first and then fight me over it after.”

Ezra stifled a laugh. He’d never seen Crowley talk this much in such a short time before, and it was sort of (extremely) adorable. “Go on, then.”

“You deserve so much more than what Gabriel gave you. You are sodding fucking stardust - he is too, I suppose, but he’s all the rubbish bits that the stars didn’t want - and that means that you are something special, alright? And… and _shit_ , Ezra, you matter a lot to me. I’ve spent my life studying the stars because they’re so beautiful and captivating, and I’ll be damned if you’re not the fucking starriest thing on this planet.” He blinked. “That didn’t make any sense, did it?”

It had actually made quite a bit of sense, but Ezra wasn’t quite ready to hope that it meant what he thought it did, so he said “A little, my dear, but I’m still quite confused.”

“Okay, let me do this another way.” There was a little pause while Crowley collected his thoughts. “I never thought I’d find anything that I liked to look at as much as the stars, anything I’d think about as much. For as long as I can remember, I’ve spent my days and nights dreaming and forming theories and talking about astrophysics with whoever is willing to listen. But then I hit this bloke with my car, and he fainted before I got to talk to him, but when he came around I found out that he was clever and kind and funny. We spoke a couple of times, and my godson told me that I should ask him out, so I did because he was beautiful and I wanted to. But he said no-” Ezra flinched, but Crowley kept going “-and so I told myself that I’d let him go, that I’d go back to watching the night sky and trying to learn about the beginning of everything. I’d had relationships before that failed for some reason or another; sometimes it was my fault, sometimes theirs, sometimes both or neither of us. And I’d always been able to move on, always turned back to my work and been able to lose myself in it. But I couldn’t, not with this curly-haired bookseller with a dress sense from a few decades ago and the tendency to call everyone ‘dear’ and ‘darling.’ That bloke… he stuck around.”

“Why?”

Crowley shrugged. “The first time I looked through a telescope I got this feeling in my chest like I’d never see anything as wonderful again. The first time you smiled at me, Ezra, I got the same feeling.”

A choked-off sob escaped Ezra’s lips, and a litany of protests formed in his head. He was deciding which one to say first when Crowley’s next words made his mind go blank.

“Very few things matter to me, Ezra. And somehow, against all possible odds - trust me, I work with probabilities all the time - I met you in the worst way, and you just mattered. Immediately. Instantly.”

It was too much all at once, sending Ezra’s head spinning. The only thing he could do was laugh in disbelief and try to read Crowley’s eyes for a hint of the teasing or joking that he expected to find there. His laughter died when he saw nothing to give him an indication that Crowley hadn’t meant every single word he’d said.

Ezra cleared his throat. “I don’t know if I believe you.” He did, but he was trying not to.

“I’m not lying.”

“You shouldn’t feel that way about me. I’ll just… hurt you. I’ll drag you down with me.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Down where? You’re not beneath me, Ezra - you’re not beneath _anyone_ , no matter how many times Gabriel told you that you were.”

“That’s not true. You come from money.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“You have a doctorate degree and teach science at a very prestigious university.”

A shrug. “Doesn’t matter.”

“You look like-” Ezra gestured to Crowley’s entire body, which finally (finally) made Crowley crack a smile. “- _that_ , and I’m all soft and round and things.”

“Doesn’t matter, either. Also, I like the way you look.”

“Liar,” said Ezra, but a little bit of hope flared up in his chest.

“I _do_. Honestly.”

Despite everything that Crowley had said, despite all of the strange astronomical analogies and the lovely words and the way he’d tried to show Ezra that he mattered, Ezra still couldn’t seem to accept it. “Crowley, dear, you are by anyone’s standards above me, and therefore you must by definition look down on me.”

Crowley gave an exasperated sigh and strode forward, catching Ezra’s hands in his and looking Ezra right in the eye. “I’ve spent my whole life looking up at the stars, Ezra. I’m pretty sure I know what it feels like.”

There was absolutely nothing that Ezra could say to that, and so he wrenched his hands out of Crowley’s and flung his arms around the taller man’s neck, nuzzling his face into the soft leather of Crowley’s jacket. He breathed in the comforting scent of leather and cinnamon, begging his tear ducts to behave themselves because he didn’t want to start crying _now_ , not when he’d gotten this far, but they didn’t listen. So, when Crowley’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, he just let himself cry silent tears for a minute, overcome by a wave of positive emotions that he hadn’t felt in quite some time.

Deep within Ezra’s soul, the knotted ball of dark yarn began to unravel. It wasn’t gone, and it never would be, because wounds that deep leave scars behind. But for the first time since the night of the cheating boyfriend and punctured soul, a small white strand of hope was pulled out of the darkness, and it was a dark-haired man in dark-colored clothes who had found it.


	10. Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have literally no idea how to describe this other than these three words: fluff, introspection, idiocy. Do with that what you will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, hi, hello! Sorry about the delay on this one - for those of you who don't know, I write these chapter-by-chapter, so I'm never just holding out on you for fun. This also means that I have only a vague sort of idea on how things are going to go, and that idea typically changes drastically as I go. For instance, I intended to have a couple of v important conversations in this chapter, but that didn't exactly happen. I still think you'll like it, though! 
> 
> Also, in case you're wondering, the Crowley in this story is a weird hybrid of book!Crowley, series!Crowley, and me fucking around and making him a bit OC-ish. So, yeah. Them's the facts. 
> 
> As always, I love and appreciate every one of you! Your comments on the last few chapters have absolutely floored me, and I am forever in your debt for the sheer volume of validation I've received from you all. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. 
> 
> Heads up in this chapter for language and discussions of past traumatic relationships (light and minimal, the heavy stuff with Gabriel is over by now).

It was a Thursday night two weeks after the day of confessions and stardust and teary-eyed hugs, and two rather odd-looking men were walking down the streets of London Soho. They weren’t really touching, per se, because nothing about the way their arms casually knocked into each other every few steps looked intentional. They were dressed like night and day; the taller one looked like he’d recently fallen out of a young adult vampire novel and had not yet discovered that clothes came in more colors than just black, and his companion was wearing a poorly-matched combination of cream, sand beige, and light blue. It would have been nearly impossible for an outside observer to tell that they had, in fact, just come from a date. Their laughter was light and friendly rather than flirtatious, and they weren’t staring at one another like they were just waiting to get home so they could get one another into bed. No, from the outside, they looked like good friends and nothing more.

This was most decidedly not the case. It had been their first official date, and Ezra was on cloud nine. They’d gone to dinner at a lovely new restaurant in Mayfair, and Crowley had ordered a lovely fruity cocktail for Ezra, who had thoroughly enjoyed two of them. Ezra’s head was a little fuzzy - not so much so that it was impairing his vision or even making him impulsive, but enough that he could feel it - and he wasn’t sure whether that was the result of the alcohol or the sheer rush that accompanied a proper date with Crowley. He decided that it was probably some combination of both.

True to his dark, sleek, and very manly self, Crowley had forgone one of the pink-drink cocktails he’d ordered for Ezra, preferring to sip on a finger of expensive single-malt scotch. He wasn’t feeling any sort of alcoholic buzz, but Ezra’s slight giddiness meant that a small, happy smile had fastened itself to his lips and had not so much as wavered during the walk back to the bookshop.

They hadn’t driven to the date because Ezra had asked Crowley to leave the Bentley behind. He’d said that it was a “lovely evening for a walk, my dear, and it isn’t too far at all,” primarily out of concern for his life and secondarily because it _was_ actually a lovely evening for a walk. Crowley had put up only a little bit of a fight (“Oi, I’m trying to be gentlemanly, here”) before eventually caving to Ezra’s wishes. And so, they were walking, and Ezra was thrilled at the simple intimacy of a nighttime walk with his very handsome date.

The walk was mostly silent, broken occasionally by a courteous greeting from a friendly stranger or by Ezra observing something very mundane that seemed to be more wonderful than usual. Ezra wasn’t offended when Crowley didn’t respond with anything more than a grunt or shake of his head because he knew that Crowley was the sort of bloke who preferred listening to talking. He _could_ talk, of course, which Ezra knew because of the conversation about Gabriel a fortnight prior, but he typically preferred to listen to Ezra talk about things. This was the opposite of a problem, and it was also very different from the way Gabriel had constantly controlled the trajectory of every conversation, and Ezra loved Crowley for that.

All too soon, Ezra’s unswept front stoop became the stopping place for the two. Crowley scratched the back of his neck and pushed his sunglasses up his nose, oddly nervous for a man who had just had a very successful date with a gun-shy and emotionally volatile person. The anxiety was rolling off of Crowley in waves, and Ezra was confused and alarmed in equal measure. So, he did the only thing he could think of: he invited Crowley in for a cup of tea.

“What?” Crowley’s eyes were hidden, but Ezra was certain they’d gone very wide.

Ezra chuckled as he unlocked his front door. “Tea, my dear. Would you like some?”

“Er,” Crowley stammered. “I should probably go… wasn’t sure what to do just then, but I shouldn’t probably come _in_ , you understand.”

Crowley was halfway to the crosswalk before it dawned on Ezra that Crowley might think that he was being invited in for something much more exciting (well, to some people) than a cup of tea.

“Crowley!” Ezra yelped. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” To his relief, the other man spun on his heel and was standing next to him again within a few seconds.

“What misunderstanding?”

“When I asked if you’d like a cup of tea, darling, I did mean actual tea.”

The tension in Crowley’s shoulders vanished in an instant. “Oh. Right.”

Ezra’s arm was getting tired from holding the door open, so he inclined his head toward the bookshop and gave Crowley a look that he hoped meant _“get in, you idiot, this door is heavier than it looks.”_ Thankfully, that message was pretty clear, so Crowley slipped inside the shop with Ezra on his heels.

Because Ezra had been distracted by Crowley’s nervousness and his own blissful post-date happiness, he didn’t even think about the fact that his flat was a bit of a mess until they were halfway up the stairs. Mentally, he chastised himself for not bothering to tidy up a bit before leaving for the date (and wished desperately that he could momentarily become the sort of supernatural being who could miracle things clean with a wave of his hand), but he knew that nothing could be done about it now.

“Sorry for the mess,” Ezra said softly as they walked into the main room of his flat. “I wasn’t anticipating… sorry.” A painfully vivid image of Crowley’s minimalist flat and perfectly organized office flashed through Ezra’s mind, and he winced.

“It’s fine.” Crowley was smiling, which was a good sign, and Ezra relaxed a little. He instructed Crowley to have a seat at the kitchen table (after he’d cleared away the pile of rare-books listings he’d been sorting through that afternoon) and busied himself with making tea. He’d only made tea for Crowley a few times, but he knew that Crowley liked a strong cup of oolong with one sugar cube and a slice of lemon, so that was what he made. For himself he fixed an English Breakfast with plenty of cream and sugar.

Making tea was one of those things that helped Ezra relax, so he tried not to let his thoughts get too loud as he boiled the water and added the various components to two mugs. He’d subconsciously picked out the only black-colored mug in his cupboard for Crowley, which Crowley had noticed and was trying not to laugh at. After a few minutes of tea-making and not-thinking - time that Crowley had spent discreetly staring at Ezra’s handsome face and gentle hands from behind his sunglasses - Ezra plunked both mugs down onto the wood of the table and sat down with a heavy sigh.

“So,” Crowley began, squeezing lemon juice into his cup. “Tea for you means… well, it just means tea, then?”

“My dear, with me, tea will _always_ just mean tea.” And whoops, a little too close to Big Secret territory with that one, so Ezra quickly finished with “Really, though, I’m very fond of the stuff, and I find it’s perfect for a good wind-down at night.”

A faint laugh slipped from Crowley’s lips. “Yes, I’ve discovered that as well.”

Ezra sipped at his tea as he struggled to come up with a way to ask why Crowley had gotten so nervous outside, savoring the sweetness on his tongue. They hadn’t ordered dessert at the restaurant because he hadn’t told Crowley that he wanted any, which was a decision he was deeply regretting.

“Crowley, would you be a dear and take off your glasses?” There, a good start. Over the past few weeks, Ezra had found that the presence of the dark glasses bothered him more and more, and so he always asked Crowley to take them off when they were alone. Crowley never fought him on it, but he never did it unless Ezra asked.

One of Crowley’s grunts - the kind that Ezra had learned meant “sure, yeah” - was all Ezra got in the way of an answer, and then those stupidly expensive things were folded and laid on the table between Crowley and Ezra.

Ezra smiled, taking a moment to enjoy the stark beauty of Crowley’s eyes. He did this every time Crowley took them off for two reasons: one, because he truly never got tired of admiring them; and two, because he wanted Crowley to _know_ that he loved looking at them. “Thank you.”

Crowley grunted again and took a gulp of tea, staring resolutely at a dark splotch on the wood next to his hand (it was ink. Ezra had gone through a quill-and-inkwell phase about five years back, and it had gone pretty poorly). After another few seconds of silence, he sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Why’d you suddenly decide to have me come in for tea, Ezra? You said yourself that you hadn’t planned for guests tonight.”

To Ezra’s dismay, his stupid cheeks flushed an alarmingly bright shade of red. “Well, I noticed that when we got back to the shop- when we got here, I mean, you looked a bit… nervous.”

Crowley quirked an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yes,” Ezra said quickly. “And I didn’t know why, but tea usually helps calm me down, so I figured it might do some good.”

“Mmm.” Two-toned eyes left blue ones and began studying the ink stain once more.

Ezra cleared his throat politely, mouth going dry in spite of the liquid that he was still practically pouring into it. “Yes, well. I was actually wondering why you got nervous. I’d like to know, so I can help, but only if you want to tell me.”

“Funny thing,” Crowley muttered after a moment. “I’m usually very good at hiding what I’m feeling.”

This made Ezra’s insides tighten uncomfortably. It appeared that Crowley had in fact _not_ wanted Ezra to notice his discomfort and would have preferred to keep it hidden, so Ezra felt a little like he’d trespassed into something he shouldn’t have seen.

“Sorry.” There was nothing else he could think to say. “Forget I asked.”

Crowley’s head snapped up. “No, don’t… don’t apologize, Ezra. You didn’t do anything wrong, I’m just not used to people noticing my feelings when I’m trying to hide them.” He sighed. “That’s something I suspect I’m going to have to warm up to, since you’ll be around all the time.”

“Right.” Ezra felt a little faint at the blatant reminder that Crowley wanted him around, but he couldn’t stop himself from smiling over the rim of his mug. “So, my dear. Tell me what happened.”

All of the confidence that had reappeared for a moment in Crowley’s eyes was gone in a flash, and he fidgeted a little in his seat. “Look, I’ve been on a fair number of dates before. And usually, at the end, I drop the person home and there’s some sort of a goodbye-hug, or if the date went well…” He hesitated, picking at a chip in the resin of the table. “It’s just that if it was a good date I usually want to kiss the person, that’s all.”

That last sentence was rushed, so it was a good thing that Ezra was listening so carefully. The problem was, though, that he hadn’t the foggiest shadow of an idea how to respond to that.

As was customary for situations like these, the resident idiot in Ezra’s brain took the reigns. “Oh. Was it… was ours a good date, then?”

“I thought it was,” Crowley said, the tips of his ears going pink. “But if you didn’t, and I misread things, I’ll just be go-”

“No.” Ezra shook his head violently. “I thought it was a good date, too. Of course I did. Best date I’ve ever been on, really.”

Crowley laughed, but it was a choked-off sort of boyish giggle. “Laying it on a bit thick there, mate.”

“I’m serious.” It might have been a trick of the light, but Ezra could have sworn that he saw Crowley shiver. “Erm, so… you got nervous because you wanted to kiss me?”

“Yeah.”

Ezra desperately wanted to reassure Crowley that he’d have liked to be kissed, that he’d wanted it too, but that sticky black residue labeled _Gabriel_ was still clinging to the edges of his soul. A very large part of Ezra was tempted to lean over the table and kiss Crowley until their lips went numb, and the rest of him was resisting the urge to get up and run away. Unlike the first kiss in Crowley’s flat, Ezra managed to stamp down the voice telling him to bolt, but he couldn’t quite shake the fear for long enough to go through with a kiss.

Across the table, Crowley had gone very still, and he still wasn’t looking at Ezra. This was momentarily puzzling until Ezra realized that it had been nearly a minute since Crowley had answered his question in the affirmative, and that while he’d had a very interesting internal debate, he’d said none of it out loud.

“I want to- look, I’d like to say that you should have kissed me, but I don’t know what I would have done.” The shitty thing about honesty is that there’s usually no way to sugarcoat it without being at least mildly deceitful, and Ezra knew this. It didn’t make it any easier to watch Crowley flinch at his words, though.

“Probably good that I hesitated, then.” Crowley’s voice had gone flat, and Ezra hated it.

“It’s not that I don’t want to kiss you, my dear,” he said softly. “I… most of me wants to kiss you right now, just to prove to you that I really am interested in you and that I had a _lovely_ time tonight, but I just- oh, I don’t know. I suppose I’m not really ready for that, just yet.”

When Crowley looked up, his thin lips were curled into a flirtatious smirk, and he waggled his dark eyebrows. “You want to kiss me, eh?”

“Quite.” Ezra couldn’t have stopped the blush if he’d tried.

“But you need time.”

“Yes.”

Unbidden, a hundred scenarios in which Crowley morphed into a Gabriel-esque man broke into Ezra’s thoughts. He froze, terrified that Crowley would say that he wasn’t worth waiting for, or that Crowley would kiss him anyway. He wasn’t really sure which was worse. And then Crowley spoke, and those fears shattered like glass.

“Okay.” It was one word, two syllables, and four letters, and it made Ezra fall in love harder and faster than he’d thought possible. He’d known that he loved Crowley for quite some time, of course, but loving someone and being _in_ love with someone were different.

Ezra had both loved and been in love with Gabriel, in a manner of speaking. He’d adored Gabriel and found him very aesthetically pleasing, but it was possibly more accurate to say that Ezra loved Gabriel because he thought that Gabriel was the best the world had to offer and that he was more infatuated with Gabriel than anything else. He’d loved and been in love, sort of, but it hadn’t been anything like this.

 _This_ was, for want of better descriptors, the single most stupefying thing Ezra had felt in thirty-six-and-a-half years of life. It collided with his chest, quite literally knocking the wind out of him, and his mind went completely blank. It was simultaneously the most freeing and frightening thing Ezra had felt in his life, and his already off-kilter emotional compass didn't know how to handle it. So, he just sat across from Crowley, gasping like he’d run a half marathon while opening and closing his jaw like a fish out of water. 

“Ezra?” Crowley’s eyes were wide with concern, so Ezra did his best to respond.

His best turned out to be a sound that rather resembled the noise that a squeaky hinge makes, and he stuttered for a moment before finally finding words. “You mean that?”

“Of course.” Frown lines wrinkled the skin on Crowley’s forehead. “Are you alright?”

“Hngh,” said Ezra. “Yes. I just thought that… never mind, it’s no matter. _Thank you_ , Crowley.” On instinct, he reached across the table and grabbed Crowley’s hand, brushing his thumb over the back of it and reveling in the soft skin and fine dark hair. He liked the way their hands looked together; pale skin against tan, well-manicured nails against hastily short-clipped ones, wide against slender. Lovely, that.

“Is hand-holding alright, then?”

“Always, my darling. Any time you like.” Crowley grinned so widely that his cheeks must have been hurting, but Ezra never wanted him to stop and grinned right back.

It was quite late, and Ezra didn’t want Crowley walking home alone in the dark. Crowley had protested, of course, saying that he was a full-grown man who was entirely capable of walking twenty blocks by himself, but Ezra refused to be budged. There was a brief moment of mutual panic over where Crowley would sleep, but then Crowley asked for a blanket and stretched out across the sofa in Ezra’s sitting room. It was strangely normal, the sight of Crowley on Ezra’s couch. Nothing looked wrong or weird about it at all; instead, it was rather like the sitting room had been missing something that had finally been put into place.

Ezra settled down in the chair next to the fireplace. Ordinarily he would have lit it, but he remembered Crowley’s fear of fire and consequently left the hearth dark. He was re-reading a collection of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories for the third time and enjoying it as much as he had the first time (which was quite a lot, as he had a love for horror that was incongruous both with his hatred of blood and sunny disposition), and he had gotten so engrossed in it that he jumped at the sound of Crowley’s voice.

“What’re you reading?”

“Hmm? Oh, Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories.”

Crowley made a snuffling sound and wiggled around on the sofa, apparently trying to get comfortable in a space that was at least a foot and a half too short for his long body. “Never read any Poe, actually.”

“ _What_?”

“I know, I know. Kick me out on my ass, I deserve it.” The teasing was evident in Crowley’s voice, but Ezra was still bewildered by his companion’s lack of Poe-knowledge, so he huffed.

“My dear, you _must_ read some of his stories. They’re marvelous, truly, and I don’t always enjoy American writing, so you can trust me when I say he’s one of the best.”

Ezra had thought, earlier, that it wouldn’t ever be possible to fall more in love with AJ Crowley. Less than an hour later, fate decided to prove him wrong, because Crowley said “Read it to me, then,” and Ezra’s heart started doing kick-flips in his chest. It was interesting that this whole being-in-love business got both scarier and more wonderful with every passing second. 

“You’re sure? They’re a bit… dark and spooky.”

“I like spooky,” Crowley mumbled into the arm of the couch. “Big spooky fan, me.”

There was literally nothing in the world Ezra would rather have done than pulled Crowley off of that blasted sofa and kiss him until they passed out from oxygen deprivation, but he reminded himself that it was _his_ idea to take things slow, so he just opened the book to one of his favorite stories and began to read.

They got through “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by which time Crowley had started to yawn every half-minute, and Ezra told him quite firmly to go to sleep. He did, after a minute or two, but Ezra didn’t move from the chair for nearly another hour. It had gone half-one in the morning and by all reasonable standards, Ezra should have gone to bed when Crowley did. However, the idea of sleeping seemed much less attractive than reading a good book and listening to Crowley’s soft snores (and the occasional murmured phrase - Crowley was a bit of a sleep-talker, as it turned out), so Ezra stayed in the sitting room until he could no longer keep his eyes open.

Morning came as it always did, and Ezra got up and dressed quickly. Crowley was still sleeping, so he crept into the kitchen and made himself the quietest cup of cocoa known to man, sipping it slowly as he debated whether or not to wake Crowley. It was a Friday, which meant that Crowley had a class at ten, and it was nearly eight. He decided that it was better for Crowley to be a bit angry at being woken up than miss one of his classes, so he set down his cocoa and went into the sitting room.

Crowley was, predictably, not a morning person (Ezra had a flashback to the late-morning call he’d received the day after Crowley had hit him with the Bentley, and he couldn’t stop himself from laughing at the memory, which annoyed Crowley even more). He grumbled his way around Ezra’s kitchen, searching first for coffee - which Ezra didn’t drink and therefore didn’t have on hand - before finally settling on some caffeinated tea.

The sight of Crowley sitting at the table with his dark hair staticky and disheveled from sleep, gulping down hot tea like his life depended on it, made Ezra’s heart beat a little faster. It was all terribly domestic, this, and he found that it wasn’t nearly as terrifying to be in this situation with Crowley as it had been the first time with Gabriel. There were a number of things that contributed to this, of course, but the only one Ezra’s mind could think of was that Crowley was _Crowley_ and not Gabriel. Gabriel had been demanding and sometimes cruel, and Ezra had often woken up in their flat feeling ashamed and guilty. But Crowley had stayed the night without pressuring Ezra into anything, and he’d taken the sofa without being asked, and he’d even requested that Ezra read to him because he knew Ezra liked to do that. He was, in short, every good thing that Gabriel was not.

Across the table, Crowley slumped down in his chair and said, “Your sofa is going to kill my back, Ezra. I’m getting you a new one so I don’t wake up with scoliosis next time.”

“There’s going to be a next time?” He’d meant it to be teasing, but it came out more hopeful (and mildly desperate, but both of them ignored that).

“If you let me buy you a better sofa.” Ezra burst into laughter as Crowley flopped forward, landing face-down on the wood with a _thunk_ and a soft “Ow, _fuck_.”

 _I’m in love with you_ , Ezra thought, watching affectionately as Crowley rubbed at his sore forehead and started muttering about Ezra’s furniture being out to get him. He took a sip of his cocoa and smiled, not caring at all that it had gone cold.


	11. Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very dialogue-heavy chapter in which Ezra finds out something about Crowley's past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY!! I'm so sorry for vanishing for the past few days; I went on a short trip this weekend and didn't have time to write. I apologize for not giving y'all a heads up - that wasn't very sexy of me, was it? Having learned from this mistake, here's a heads up: I'll be traveling this week, so updates will be pretty irregular. There are a few multiple-hour-long plane rides, during which time I hope to get some serious writing done, but no promises! 
> 
> Right, so, onto more relevant and important things. I wrote and re-wrote this chapter literally four times, and I kind of hate it (? maybe ?). I wasn't initially planning on telling much of Crowley's backstory, but I got repeated requests to do so, so... here you go. Please let me know what you think; I'd love to hear from you, as I always do!
> 
> Thanks to y'all for being so patient and lovely!! I promise we will get back around to the topic of Ezra's asexuality VERY SOON. Also, a note on how long I think this will be: I'm shooting for 15 chapters. We'll see if that happens ;) 
> 
> heads up for language, mention of homophobia, and Crowley having a mildly tragic thing in his past. Also, there's a sickening amount of fluff at the end, so I guess be on the watch for that too :)

A cup of perfectly prepared tea was going cold next to a half-eaten chocolate scone, and they were quite offended that Ezra had forgotten about them. The man in question was staring off into empty space, thinking deeply. Crowley was sitting next to him and was engaged in some sort of lively conversation with Anathema, his double espresso long since finished. If someone had asked Ezra what his partner and his best friend were talking about, he wouldn’t have been able to come up with an answer because he hadn’t been listening much at all. He was much more concerned with what had happened when they’d walked in the door: Anathema had waved to both of them and called “Oh, hello, Ezra! Hi, AJ!”

It had never bothered Ezra before that everyone else called Crowley by his first name because he’d never really been around anyone who did so - except for Adam, but for some reason the boy didn’t count in his mind - and therefore hadn’t ever had cause to see it as a problem. Now, though, it had become glaringly obvious that being the only person who addressed his partner by his surname was not only odd but also irritating, so he resolved himself to try out the whole first-name business. Silently, Ezra rolled the two letters around in his head, trying to associate _AJ_ with the man he’d thus far only called _Crowley_ and finding it very difficult to do so. He must have been making a face because the conversation between Anathema and Crowley died quite suddenly (not that Ezra noticed, of course, being as lost in thought as he was at the time).

“Hey,” said Crowley, stroking the back of Ezra’s hand and jolting him out of his thoughts. “Are you alright?”

Ezra blushed. “Yes, yes, of course! Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You haven’t finished your scone.” To an outsider, this would have seemed somewhat normal - not everyone finishes all of the food they order every single time - but Crowley and Anathema knew Ezra well enough to know that if there was an unfinished pastry in front of their food-loving friend, something was off.

Anathema shoved it across the table toward Ezra. “And you haven’t drunk your tea, either. I’m trying not to be offended, but _man_. For you to not eat and drink something that you order here is cause for alarm, mate.” She was teasing, but Ezra blushed even harder and busied himself with scarfing down the rest of his scone. When he’d finished, he pushed the plate back to Anathema and winked clumsily at her, but this did almost nothing to lessen the concerns of his dining partners.

“You sure you’re alright?” Crowley’s long fingers had stopped their stroking and were now sliding between Ezra’s, a motion that had become much more comfortable since Ezra had given Crowley permission to hold his hand just over a week ago.

Ezra forced a semi-relaxed smile onto his face and squeezed Crowley’s hand. “I’m fine. Just… lost in thought.”

“Shocking,” laughed Anathema. She blew Ezra a kiss before turning back to Crowley, and this time Ezra listened to the conversation for long enough to know that they were discussing her wedding to Newt.

Crowley was, much to Ezra’s utter shock, providing helpful tips on wedding planning and pointing Anathema in the direction of a good tailor’s shop for Newt’s tux and a second-hand bridal store with good quality gowns. For her part, Anathema was absolutely gushing with gratitude and excitement, and before long she’d talked Ezra into taking Crowley to the wedding as his plus one.

“When _is_ this wedding, my dear girl?”

She frowned. “I thought I gave you an invitation.”

“No, you most certainly did not.”

Anathema darted away from the table after saying something about grabbing an extra invitation from the back and it probably taking a minute or two, but Ezra’s focus left her the moment she stood up. He fixed his eyes on Crowley’s handsome face, trying desperately to make Crowley’s first name seem natural and normal. After a few seconds, he gave up and just gave it his best shot.

“Erm, AJ,” Ezra began slowly. “You don’t have to come with me to the wedding, I know that’s a thing that couples typically do after they’ve been dating for months or even years, and we most definitely haven’t been-”

Crowley cut him off. “I’m going if you’re going. Also, _what_ did you just call me?”

“AJ.” No amount of effort could have kept Ezra’s ears and cheeks from going pink, so he didn’t even try. He just sat there and watched Crowley watch him, growing increasingly nervous with every passing second of silence.

“I thought I’d like it,” murmured Crowley. “But I don’t. It feels… I dunno, it feels _wrong_ coming from you.”

Making a valiant effort not to be offended, Ezra sighed. “Well, I suppose it was worth a try. We’ve got to come up with something, though, because I simply can’t keep on calling you by your surname.”

“Yeah.” Crowley wrinkled his nose at the thought. “It has certain connotations, doesn’t it?”

It did - connotations like snobbish and uptight and high-and-mighty, which are usually associated with infamously wealthy families - but that wasn’t what concerned Ezra. He was worried that it sounded formal and stiff, both of which are adjectives that should not be used to describe a romantic relationship of any kind. This was especially true of a romantic relationship in which one party was in love with the other, and as this was the situation that Ezra found himself in, an adjustment was very much in order. Mentally, Ezra scolded himself for not picking up on the strange formality of it all until Anathema had accidentally made him aware of it (he winced when he remembered that Crowley had actually brought it up before, the night of Ezra’s Gabriel-confession), but he decided it would be better just to agree with Crowley than to unpack all of that.

He laughed and stroked his thumb across the back of Crowley’s hand. “It does carry a particular weight, yes.”

They were interrupted by the reappearance of Anathema, who thrust a cream-colored envelope into Ezra’s unoccupied hand. When he opened it, he found a rather plain-looking wedding invitation, an RSVP card with an accompanying stamped and addressed envelope, and a smaller card labeled _“Plus One.”_ The latter was already filled out in Anathema’s looping script, with Crowley’s name and phone number written in.

“Why don’t you just keep this?” Ezra asked, waving the card in front of her face.

She rolled her eyes. “If you give it to me now, I’ll lose it. So, just drop it in the mail, and Newt will write you both down.”

Ezra huffed and shoved the RSVP and other little card into the ready-made envelope, muttering something about it being ridiculous and attempting to ignore the little laugh that Crowley was choking on. Anathema’s uncle yelled something harsh from the kitchen, so Anathema kissed Ezra on the cheek and waved goodbye to Crowley before going to investigate. With her otherwise occupied, the two men left the bakery, hands still locked together.

It was a Saturday, and Ezra’s typical summer Saturdays were spent walking the streets of Soho and feeding the ducks at St. James’s Park, so that was what they were going to do. Soho was, as usual, full of interesting people. Many of them smiled at Ezra and Crowley, and only one woman (whose face was naturally pinched up as though she’d been smelling Stilton for her entire life) gave them a foul look and called them something that Ezra thought was quite rude and unnecessary. Ezra’s blood ran a bit hot at the sound of the slur, but Crowley looked as nonchalant as ever, and Ezra wondered if he’d even heard it. Unbeknownst to Ezra, Crowley _had_ heard, but he’d been called that too many times to count and did his best not to let it faze him anymore.

As was par for Crowley’s course, he didn’t say much at all. Ezra did the talking, saying hello to friendly strangers and spouting unusual pieces of literary information for minutes at a time (breathing was optional during those types of rants). It occurred to Ezra sometimes that he might be boring his partner, but Crowley always smiled softly when Ezra spoke, so he figured it was alright.

On any given day, Ezra enjoyed walking; he’d given up riding his bike after the whole Bentley-bike-blood debacle, so it wasn’t like he had any other options, but he found that walking was very nice. It was even nicer when Crowley’s delicate fingers were threaded through his own, and so he swung their hands a little as they walked. This made Crowley laugh, a warm and sunny sound that caused Ezra’s chest to feel as though someone had set it on fire. Crowley’s laugh always had this effect on Ezra, but it was a rare thing. It was also a thing that Ezra counted among the most wonderful parts of being alive, which is why he was determined to do and say things to make it happen as often as he could.

When they arrived at the park, Ezra’s usual bench was unoccupied, so they sat down in their respective ways. Ezra was, as always, sitting with his back straight and legs crossed primly at the ankles, and Crowley was slouched in an oddly appealing manner across the remaining portion of the bench. For the first time since they’d taken each other’s hands at the bakery, they let go. The ducks had gathered and were demanding to be fed, an activity to which hand-holding was and impediment. A small paper bag full of day-old rolls from the bakery was produced from Ezra’s pocket, and the duck-feeding commenced in companionable silence.

After a few minutes, the bread was gone and the last crumbs were shaken onto the ground, and the ducks waddled on to their next victims. Ezra was brushing crumbs off of his trousers when Crowley spoke, which he hadn’t done since saying goodbye to Anathema.

It wasn’t a long, eloquent speech. It was a single word: “Anthony.”

Ezra jumped. “Sorry, my dear. What did you say?”

“I said Anthony. It’s my actual name, see, but I’ve never liked it much. No one outside of my family really uses it - I tell everyone else to call me AJ, y’know - but it seems like the sort of thing that would feel right coming from you.”

“I’m not going to call you something that you don’t like.”

“Well, have you got any better ideas?”

He hadn’t. “No.”

“Just…” Crowley gestured at nothing. “Just give it a try. If one or both of us hate it, we’ll do something else.”

“Something like what?”

A smirk curled at the edge of Crowley's mouth. “Either you call me ‘Crowley’ forever, or I get used to the entirely strange sound of you saying ‘AJ’ and we move on with our lives.”

“What’s so odd about my calling you AJ, dear?” Much as he tried to stop it, the word _forever_ was bouncing around distractingly in Ezra’s brain, and the thought of having one with Crowley made his mouth go dry.

Crowley grunted. “You’re the only thirty-something bloke I’ve ever met who speaks like they were born before the second World War, so something as modern as the name I’ve chosen for myself sounds totally anachronistic when you say it.”

Ezra wanted to protest, but he could see where Crowley was coming from, so he settled for rolling his eyes and shifting his body a little bit away from Crowley’s.

Chuckling lightly, Crowley reached into Ezra’s lap and grabbed his hand again. “I never said that I don’t like your old-fashioned way of talking. I do like it, just so you know.”

“I feel like you’re mocking me,” Ezra said, still not looking at Crowley but allowing his hand to be held in the possessive way that Crowley always held it.

“I’m not, I swear. It’s very… very _you_ , I suppose, and I like you quite a lot, so I like the way you talk, too.”

It was still a little odd, hearing compliments and professions of romantic attraction from Crowley, so Ezra flushed crimson and stuttered out some sort of thanks into his lap. Silence fell over them again, but this time both were smiling and there were no intruding ducks to disturb the small romantic touches they exchanged.

These touches were limited to their arms. Someone’s thumb or finger would make soothing circles on the other’s hand, and sometimes one of them would lean over to rest his head on his partner’s shoulder, but there was nothing past that. It hadn’t even been ten days since Ezra had been the one to suggest taking it easy with the physical affection (in particular, not kissing until he felt ready to do so), but part of him wanted to lean over and catch Crowley’s lips just for a moment. He wanted to remember what it felt like to kiss Crowley, experience again the way his stomach flipped inside out and his lungs forgot how to breathe and his heart wanted to escape the confines of his ribs, but he knew it wouldn’t be fair to either of them to do so. More than anything, Ezra wanted his second kiss with Crowley - his first kiss with Crowley being properly _his_ \- to be something he wouldn’t be frightened of, something he was sure about, and he wasn’t quite at that point yet. So, with a barely-audible sigh, Ezra rested his head on Crowley’s shoulder and reveled in the happy humming sound that vibrated through Crowley’s bones.

They sat there for a while, watching other people feed the ducks and smiling at each other every so often. A small dog sniffed at Crowley’s boots once, and he remarked that Adam would have liked it, which prompted a discussion about when Adam was next coming to town (next weekend) and whether or not Adam knew about the change in their relationship (yes; he’d evidently guessed it on one of his previous phone calls with Crowley because “You sound happy, Uncle AJ”).

“We shouldn’t ever take him to the bakery,” Ezra said with a smile. “Anathema would corner him and interrogate him about us for hours.”

“Yeah, probably, but Adam would like her.”

Ezra sighed again. “Yes, I rather think he would.”

“Let’s take him to meet her next Saturday.”

It was stupid how easily Ezra caved. He didn’t protest even once, didn’t even try because he knew he’d give in. “Lovely.”

A few hours later, they were lounging in Ezra’s sitting room, sharing a nice bottle of merlot over a platter of fish and chips (which Ezra had said was sacrilegious but took part in anyway). Something was still nagging at the back of Ezra’s mind, and after a few glasses of wine, it came out in the form of a leading statement.

“You know a lot about weddings, dear heart,” he said. Crowley’s eyebrows shot up and his eyes - which Ezra could see because he’d asked Crowley to take off the glasses as soon as they’d got into the bookshop - widened. When he spoke, though, his voice betrayed no trace of the surprise or worry that had etched itself onto his face.

“I do, yeah.”

“Why?” Ezra hated himself a bit for pushing the issue when Crowley clearly didn’t want to talk about it, but he was desperate to know more about his boyfriend’s past. He’d found that dating a man who preferred listening to talking came with one distinct disadvantage: getting information about that man’s personal life was about as easy as convincing a dog that it was a cat. Unless Crowley really wanted to share something, he didn’t, and consequently Ezra knew very little about his life outside of astronomy and Adam.

Crowley poured himself another half-glass of wine, which meant that he was planning on spending the night on the sofa (Ezra had made a two-glasses rule a few nights before because he didn’t want Crowley driving drunk - this was a little on the conservative side, but Crowley didn’t argue). It was, regrettably, still the same sofa as the last time Crowley had stayed over because the new one had been ordered but was taking a while to arrive. Thus, Crowley’s drinking more wine seemed less likely to be a choice born from the burning desire to spend another night fucking up his back on Ezra’s lumpy couch and more likely to be along the lines of needing liquid courage. This was, Ezra thought, not exactly a good thing.

“I’ve had some experience with weddings.” Another evasive answer, another opportunity for Ezra to make a pest of himself and ask a question.

“Oh?”

This may not have been the most eloquent of questions, but it got the point across, and Crowley’s beautiful eyes slid shut as he rested his head against the back of the couch with a groan. “If you make me talk about this, you might not like the story.”

Ezra couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “Anthony, dearest, you know all about my baggage. Yours can’t possibly be any worse, and if it is, I don’t believe I’ll care.” _Because I love you, and I’m in love with you._

A sigh, and then, “I was almost married, once. Got all the way to the week of the wedding before she called it off.”

Given Crowley’s hesitation, Ezra wasn’t exactly surprised, but he still felt a pang in his chest and moved from the chair to sit next to Crowley on the sofa. “I’m sorry.”

Crowley shrugged. “Don’t be. It was a long time ago.”

The answers were still short and clipped, and Ezra did his best not to get frustrated. “Would you… do you think you might tell me about it?”

Crowley’s dark-colored eye popped open to look at Ezra. “Why? It’s not relevant to me anymore.”

“I just want you to talk to me, dear. About something that matters.”

“I have talked to you about things that matter,” Crowley said crisply. “Did a whole lot of talking about _you_ , if I recall, and I explicitly said that you matter to me.”

The pre-programmed alarm bells in Ezra’s head were ringing. He didn’t want to make Crowley upset, and he seemed to be heading down that path, so he clarified his thinking. “I know, and I am so grateful that you did. If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t be-” He gestured between them, “-here. I wouldn’t be able to look at you and think ‘God above, I’m the luckiest person alive.’ So please, please don’t read this as me asking for more praise or compliments or such like. I just want to know you, my dear, and that includes who you were before you met me.”

The tensed muscles in Crowley’s face relaxed a little. “Alright.”

“Alright?” Ezra couldn’t keep the hope out of his voice.

“Yes, fine. I’ll tell you about my stupid bloody engagement if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Thank you, Anthony.”

Their wine glasses were topped off with the rest of the bottle, and Crowley took a minute to answer a call from Adam (“The Antichrist says hello, Ezra”), but the time for Crowley to be vulnerable finally came.

“I’m giving you the short version,” Crowley said over the rim of his wine glass, and Ezra nodded. Baby steps, eh? “Basically, I met this woman named Bee - short for Beatrice - about a decade ago when I was an undergrad studying physics. She and I got on really well, and I sort of… dunno, I guess I fell in love with her. She was everything I thought I wanted: smart, funny, beautiful, all that. Every guy’s dream, y’know?” Ezra did not, of course, know the feeling of having a Dream Woman, but he agreed anyway to keep Crowley talking. “Anyway. We went out for a while, and she followed me around when I got my master’s degree and such. Got engaged during the first year of my doctorate, and we set the date for the summer before my second year. She wasn’t really into the whole wedding-planning gig, so I took it on - that’s how I know so much about the stuff I was telling Anathema, see - and before I knew it, it was a couple months out from the wedding.”

He stopped very suddenly, staring into his nearly-empty wine glass and going a bit stiff next to Ezra. In an attempt to be supportive and consoling, Ezra pulled Crowley close against him so that they were sort of… well, snuggling.

It worked. Crowley nuzzled his nose into Ezra’s shirt for a moment, apparently working up the courage to continue, and then he started talking again. “So yeah. I, erm, I wanted Bee to sign a prenuptial agreement because I get a boatload of money from my parents’ trust fund and I wanted to save any extra for my kids. She and I both wanted kids, so I thought it wouldn’t be a problem, but she didn’t like the idea. I eventually got her to sign it, but she really wasn’t happy about it, and our relationship got a bit tetchy over it all. A couple months later, like literally six days before the wedding, Bee came to me and broke off the engagement because ‘it wasn’t going to work for her,’ and that was that.”

“Oh,” Ezra said after a moment. “So she was in it for your money, then?”

“Mmm.”

Ezra hadn’t realized that he’d started stroking Crowley’s hair, but he had, so he kept doing it. It was surprisingly soft (he’d thought there would be a lot of gel and hairspray to make it crunchy, but there wasn’t), and he loved the intimacy of the action so much that it made his heart ache. “Did you ever find out what happened to her?”

A choked-sounding laugh dropped from Crowley’s lips. “Yeah. I know a little too much about it, actually.”

“What?”

“She married my brother, Luca, a couple years later. He, apparently, didn’t have the same hang ups about the family money as I did - as I _do_ \- and was more than happy to take Bee for himself.”

The blood drained from Ezra’s face. “Did your brother know what she did to you?”

“Of course. He was supposed to be my best man.” The room went silent as Ezra processed this and talked himself out of tracking Luca down and giving him a stern talking-to (it would have been a beating, but Ezra was a pacifist and a weakling). Crowley eventually shifted away from Ezra slightly, still resting his head on Ezra’s shoulder but not quite as curled up as he had been. “Anyway. I don’t really go to family stuff much anymore. It’s been years, but I just prefer not to have the reminder.”

“I am so sorry,” Ezra whispered, turning his head to drop a gentle kiss into Crowley’s hair. Maybe he shouldn’t have done it, but nothing else seemed to make sense.

The grin that broke out across Crowley’s face in response could have outshone the sun. “It’s really alright. I realized after a few months that I wasn’t as in love with Bee as I’d thought I was; I used to think that I wouldn’t be able to breathe without her, but it turned out that I could actually breathe a little easier. I went to therapy for a bit, and it helped, and eventually I found that there are better things I could be doing, so I did them.”

“Like watching the stars,” Ezra said knowingly.

Crowley blinked at him. “Yeah, exactly like that. I get a bit caught up in that sometimes, actually.”

“That’s perfectly alright, my darling.”

“I tend to forget things. Important things, like birthdays and anniversaries.”

Ezra wasn’t sure why Crowley was telling him this, but he certainly wasn’t about to put a stop to it. “That’s fine.”

Crowley startled. “You don’t mind?”

“Anthony, I don’t mind at all.” His heart beat faster at the implication that Crowley was planning to stick around long enough to have to remember things like anniversaries and birthdays, and he couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, dear,” Ezra said quickly. “I was just thinking about what you said about the way I talk. You like it because you like me, right?” A nod. “I like you, too, dearest. Quite a lot, and very possibly even more than I should given the short time in which we’ve been courting. All that is to say that I like _you_ , even the parts that other people haven’t liked.” Whatever response Crowley gave was so quiet that Ezra missed it completely. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“My eyes,” Crowley muttered. “You like my eyes. They don’t frighten you like they do other people.”

It was impossible for Ezra to imagine being anything approaching frightened of Crowley’s eyes. He loved them. He thought they were beautiful and enchanting and perfectly _Crowley_ , and he wouldn’t have changed a thing about them.

“I do like your eyes. I like them very much.” An understatement to be sure, but a strong enough assertion that it made Crowley smile again.

“I like yours, too.”

Ezra hummed, making a mental list of things he found aesthetically pleasing about Crowley (individual things as opposed to what he wanted to say, which was “every single thing about Anthony Crowley”).

“I like your hands. They’re gentle, and I think they’re beautiful.”

“I like your hair.” Crowley instantly caught on to Ezra’s game, eyes flicking up to look at Ezra’s curls. “Never seen hair that color before. It’s nice.”

“Ears.” Blushing furiously, Ezra tried to recover some semblance of normal human speech patterns. “Your ears are quite pretty, and I like when I say something to make them go red.”

“You’re a good height for hugging.”

“The way you walk is both confusing and beautiful.” That got a laugh out of Crowley, another one of the rare authentic ones, and Ezra’s chest got hot again.

“I like it when you talk about books, even when I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t know much about stars, but I’d like to learn from you because your voice is wonderful and you’re quite intelligent.”

Crowley’s pretty ears were quickly going that lovely shade of red. “Your bookshop is really cluttered, which I usually don’t like, but I like it because it’s full of things that you love.”

“You always smell good.” This wasn’t the best or most heartfelt thing that Ezra could have said in the moment, but it was what was on his mind (because the leather-and-spices scent was filling his nose and had been doing so for quite a while, and it was very important that he comment on it).

“Your dress sense is horrible. I like it.”

Ezra rolled his eyes. “Your dress sense is perfect. I like it, too.”

“I like you,” Crowley said with a wink. It should have sounded childish, but it didn’t.

“And I, my dear, like you.”

It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, how someone can say one l-word and mean quite another one. Neither Ezra nor Crowley knew this about the other, of course, but they’d both been doing exactly that.

Ezra had been in love with Crowley for nine days and loved him for months longer than that, and he was still getting used to the novelty of loving again.

For his part, Crowley had loved and been in love with Ezra for as long as he’d known him. Admitting this to himself, however, was another matter entirely.


	12. Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I do not have one because A VERY LARGE LOT OF THINGS happen in quick succession in this chapter. It might be more accurate to call it a "mess" than a "chapter," but there's not an option for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY. Ladies, gents, non-binary friends: This... this got out of hand. 
> 
> So, I hope it doesn't feel too rushed; a TON of things needed to happen, and I regrettably can't keep dragging this story on forever because I've got a life I'm supposed to be living, so this is the outcome of several hours of writing-deleting, writing-deleting, debating-splitting-into-multiple-chapters-and-deciding-against-it. I hope you enjoy it, and as always I'd love to hear your thoughts! 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to read and leave kudos and comments! You all are wonderful humans and I adore each and every one of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you! More updates to come, I promise - this story isn't quite over yet!
> 
> heads up for language and sickly-sweet fluff.

The cashier at Benny’s Pizza had never seen an odder-looking group of five people in his fifteen years of life than the one currently seated at table seven. On one side sat two men: the one on the left had a golden tan, was wearing sunglasses indoors, and was dressed in fashionably dark-colored clothes; his friend (boyfriend? partner? blood relative? The cashier had no idea what category to put him in) was wearing pastel-colored clothes that seemed to be a decade or so older than he was, and he spoke in a soft high tenor and called everyone “dear.” At the head of the table sat a curly-haired adolescent boy who was smirking at the man in black like he’d just thought of a particularly nasty prank to pull on him later. This boy was talking to a twenty-something-year-old woman - one of the most beautiful women the pizza parlor employee had ever seen, as a matter of fact - whose hand was interlocked with a pale, skinny, frightened-looking bloke. It was impossible to tell whether the boy was the adopted son of the two men or the young couple; he looked a little like he’d just walked up to a double date and decided to go along for the ride. After a few minutes spent studying the strange group, their order came up and other customers needed attending to, so they were mostly forgotten.

The pizza bloke was a bit of a coward and would have never had the courage to pry into anyone’s personal lives, and so he wouldn’t have had a reason to know that the blond man dressed in (what could very charitably be called) the outdated clothes went by the name of Ezra Fell and was, in fact, in a relationship with Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome. He also wouldn’t have known that one of Ezra’s defining personality traits was Worried About Most Things, but it was, and so Ezra was immensely relieved when the pimple-faced cashier turned his attention to other things.

Now that he had stopped stressing out about being indiscreetly observed by a stranger, Ezra could focus on the conversation at hand. Adam was talking about the dog he’d found and managed to convince his father to let him keep, and Crowley made some sort of comment about it being a little hellhound of a beast, which made Adam laugh. Newt, who was Anathema’s fiance and who looked like he’d probably never spent more than five minutes in direct sunlight over the course of his entire life, was very confused by this.

“He calls me the Antichrist,” Adam explained through a bite of pizza. “Me ‘n Uncle AJ saw a painting of the Antichrist once, and it looked like me, so now it’s m’ nickname.”

Crowley glared at his godson from behind his dark glasses. “Oi, Adam, chew with your mouth closed. But yeah,” he said to Newt and Anathema, “it’s a bit of a running joke with us.”

“Oh.” Newt looked slightly horrified, but Anathema was grinning and reached out to ruffle Adam’s curls.

As Ezra had expected, Anathema and Adam got on like a house on fire. Both belonged to the same breed of person - the one that is generally very sweet but also thoroughly enjoys causing harmless mayhem whenever it’s possible to do so - and they both credited themselves with Crowley and Ezra “getting together,” so the conversation between the two of them mostly consisted of recalling memories of the pining that had gone on prior to said “getting together.” Admittedly, because of the difference between talking to one’s best friend and one’s godson, Anathema had far more detailed accounts of Ezra’s longing soliloquies than Adam did of Crowley’s single-sentence endearments, and so it was mostly Ezra who was being talked about.

This was, Ezra found, extremely embarrassing but also wonderful. Sure, he didn’t necessarily fancy having his lovey-dovey thoughts about Crowley advertised to everyone, but Anathema kept the memories light and free of anything that he’d wanted kept confidential. The wonderful part of it was the way Crowley would go a rather fetching shade of purplish-pink at the mention of some of the things Ezra had told Anathema about him. It made a beautiful man even more so, and Ezra could have watched that color tinge his cheeks every day until the end of the world.

“I told Uncle AJ to ask Ezra on a date the first time we met him,” Adam said proudly, wiping pizza grease on his shorts.

Anathema laughed. “Yes, and he did, and Ezra said no.”

“Yes.” Adam smirked at Ezra. “Because he’s stupid.”

“ _Oi_ ,” Crowley growled at the same time Ezra said “ _Really_ , now.”

“You _are_ stupid, though,” Anathema said kindly, holding her fist out for Adam to bump. “And so’s your boyfriend.”

“Idiots,” Adam chirped.

“Idiots.”

“Thicker than thick.”

Another laugh from Anathema. “That, too.”

Scowling in mock-anger, Crowley grabbed Ezra’s hand and yanked it up to his lips, placing a kiss against Ezra’s knuckles. Because this had most certainly _not_ happened before, Ezra’s brain short-circuited, and he almost missed Crowley’s reply. “Well, we obviously got our act together, eh?”

“You might not’ve had me and Adam not been in the mix,” Anathema teased, winking at Ezra, who was still struggling to remember how to perform basic functions like blink and breathe and speak. Really, the way Ezra melted at the first sign of affection was nothing short of pathetic, but he didn’t have it within himself to be self-conscious about that.

Instead of replying, he leaned over and kissed Crowley lightly on the cheek, just in front of his ear, and Crowley’s light-colored blush turned several shades closer to beetroot red in an instant. The two spent a few moments staring at each other, matching love-struck grins pasted on their faces, until they were interrupted by Anathema.

“Adam, remind me to buy you an ice lolly someday.” This remark was followed by another fist bump and a pair of self-satisfied smiles. Ezra tore his eyes away from Crowley’s face for long enough to give Anathema a very dramatic eye-roll.

They boxed up the last few slices of pizza, and it was agreed that Adam would be the one to take them home (because, as he and Crowley both knew, his father was a massive fan of raiding the fridge for cold pizza in the middle of the night). Newt and Anathema walked with their arms linked and hands locked together, smiling at one another and chatting to Crowley about wedding-related affairs.

“You can’t wear a rented tuxedo to your own _wedding_ , mate.” Crowley sounded as though the very thought of such a thing was an offense against fashion - which it was - and the affronted tone to his smooth voice made Ezra chuckle. It was a rare thing, but Crowley and Ezra weren’t holding hands. Adam had inserted himself between them, taking one of each of their hands in his, not caring at all that they were taking up far more than their fair share of the sidewalk. This was an odd sort of thing for a twelve-year-old boy to do, but Adam was an odd sort of boy, and so Ezra dismissed it without much thought.

After a few minutes of walking (and Crowley giving Newt very detailed instructions about which tailor to go to and where to find the shop), the group split into two. Anathema and Newt headed for their flat after goodnight hugs and kisses on cheeks, and the remaining three continued on.

They reached Ezra’s shop first, having gone out of the way to drop Ezra home Crowley took Adam back to his flat for the night. Ezra was feeling bold, so he wrapped his arms around Crowley’s shoulders and pulled the taller man down for a tight hug.

“Thank you for dinner,” he whispered into Crowley’s ear, thrilling a little at the way Crowley shivered beneath his hands. Crowley had seemingly lost the ability to form words, and so he pulled back just enough to brush a light kiss over Ezra’s forehead before taking Adam’s hand once more.

“Night, Ezra!” Adam called with a little wave.

“Yes, goodnight, dear boy!”

Ezra watched them until they’d disappeared around the corner, and then he unlocked the door to the shop and went inside. He climbed the stairs to his flat in silence, reliving the memory of Crowley’s lips pressed against his skin (twice in one night!) as he got ready for bed.

He woke in the early hours of the morning with a crick in his neck, the lamp on his bedside table still shining and the book he’d been reading lying open on his lap. Grumbling to himself about the complete inefficiency of a body that needed sleep, Ezra put the book and his glasses underneath the lamp, which he flicked off before curling into a ball under his covers.

The second time he woke up, it was nearly noon, and it was to the sound of his telephone ringing. Hauling himself out of bed with a grunt, Ezra plodded downstairs to the phone, which had stopped ringing by the time he got to it. The red light on his answering machine was blinking, though, so he pressed play and listened to the message. It was from Crowley, of course.

 _“Hey, Ezra. Sorry I missed you - you must be out at the moment, so I’m glad I didn’t drop by. I’ve taken Adam home early today because I’ve got to go on a trip for work, which I meant to tell you last night at dinner, but I forgot. It’s some rubbish conference up in Scotland that UGlasgow is putting on, and I didn’t remember I’d agreed to go until yesterday when my department head called to remind me to check with my TA to make sure he’s good with covering my summer classes for the next couple days. Anyway, yeah. I’m leaving in an hour or so, and I’ll be back mid-week.”_ There was a long pause, and then Crowley’s smooth voice picked up again. _“I told you I was bad at remembering things, eh? I’m sorry. I… erm… I hope you have a lovely week and that you don’t sell any books you don’t want to sell. I’ll have my mobile, so call any time... I guess I’ll see you in a few days, then.”_ Another pause, but this time it ended with a click, and the automated voice on Ezra’s ansaphone announced that the message had ended.

Ezra thought momentarily about calling Crowley back to let him know that he’d received the message and to wish him safe travels, but he talked himself out of it. So, he busied himself with book repairs, not even bothering to open the shop for the day.

It occurred to Ezra as he lay in bed that night that he _missed_ Crowley. He missed the way Crowley would sneak up behind him and take his hand while he was reshelving books, missed the now-familiar sight of Crowley lounging on his couch or perched on the edge of various tables in his flat and the shop below. Once again, the contrast between Crowley and Gabriel snuck into Ezra’s mind. When Gabriel had gone on business trips, some part of Ezra had been relieved that he’d get to do what he wanted with his time and not have to entertain Gabriel at home. He’d been lonely without Gabriel, sometimes, and he missed the comfort of curling up next to someone at night, but that lonely feeling was never as acute as it was now, with Crowley. It had only been a day since he’d seen him, which was nothing new; in the few weeks they’d been together, there had been a handful or more days in which their schedules didn’t line up and they didn’t see one another. This hadn’t been a problem, really, because they’d arranged it so that they never went more than a day without seeing or at least speaking to one another. In the past, Crowley had always been within walking distance or at the very least within the London city limits, which was close enough that Ezra felt safe. But Crowley was in Scotland now, hundreds of kilometers away, and Ezra felt the pain of missing him more acutely than he had before.  
So, pushing down the insecurities that told him he was being a nuisance, Ezra slid out of bed and trotted downstairs to his phone. He punched in Crowley’s mobile number (which he’d memorized at this point) and ignored the feeling that Crowley didn’t want to speak to him.

That fear was quashed when Crowley answered on the second ring.

 _“Ezra,”_ Crowley said, and Ezra could hear the smile in his voice. _“Hi.”_

“Good evening, my dear.”

_“How’s London?”_

Ezra chuckled. “The same as when you left this morning, I’d imagine. How’s Scotland?”

_“Wet.”_

“It usually is.”

 _“Mmm,”_ Crowley said. _“I’d forgotten. It’s been years since I’ve been this far north.”_

“Good place for looking at the stars, isn’t it? Less light pollution than here, I’d guess.”

_“A bit, yeah. The countryside is better - remind me to take you sometime. We’ll do a picnic, make a night of it.”_

“Right,” Ezra murmured faintly, reigning in his imagination before it got carried away with invented scenarios involving blankets and cuddles and soft kisses. “What are you up to at the conference this week?”

_“Got a presentation tomorrow. Black holes and the way gravity affects time and such.”_

Ezra spluttered. “You’re a _presenter_ at this conference and you forgot about it?”

He could almost hear Crowley’s shrug. _“I’ve given this talk before, Ezra. Not my first rodeo.”_

“Well, best of luck.”

 _“Thank you.”_ The line went quiet for a minute save the sound of their breathing, and Ezra found himself reaching for something to talk about, something to say that wasn’t _“I miss you, come home.”_ Only one thing came to mind.

“Tell me a secret, Anthony.”

Crowley’s low, rumbling chuckle crackled over the line. _“I don’t like Scotland very much.”_

“Why?”

 _“You’re not here.”_ The smart portion of Ezra’s brain knew that Crowley had probably not meant to say that, but the arse-over-elbow-in-love part exploded into celebratory mental fireworks.

“I’ve got a secret of my own along those same lines,” Ezra said, grinning like an idiot into the phone. In a completely unsurprising turn of events, he was no longer afraid to tell Crowley that he missed him (because they were evidently the same level of pathetic idiot). “London isn’t quite so nice when you’re not in it with me.”

Apparently, Crowley had been holding his breath, because he exhaled so loudly that Ezzra had to pull the phone away for fear that his eardrums would burst. _“I’ll probably come back to this blasted rainy shithole next summer. You should come with me, and then we won’t have to be missing each other anymore.”_

Ezra gleefully realized that Crowley was planning for an event that was a year away and including him in those plans, and he couldn’t stop the hot blood from flooding his cheeks. “That sounds lovely.”

_“Good.”_

They chatted for a little while about what they planned to do when Crowley got back, so by the next time Ezra checked his watch, it had gone half midnight.

“It’s late, dear one. You should get some rest.”

A dramatically over-exaggerated sigh was followed by _“Yeah, probably.”_

“Goodnight, then.”

 _“Sleep well, and dream of me.”_ This last part was said with an audible smirk. Ezra knew that Crowley had been joking - teasing, even - but he saw a window of opportunity to make Crowley go all flustered, so he took it.

“Oh, I always do.” He stayed on the line just long enough to hear Crowley choke out the beginning of a startled question, and then he hung up, feeling very pleased with himself and much more prepared to go to bed. If he actually dreamed of Crowley, then that was of no relevance to anyone whatsoever.

The next three days passed in much the same manner. Ezra opened the shop on two of them and spent the hours shooing away customers and ensuring that all of his books stayed firmly in their respective spots on the shelves, and he mended books in the evening until either he gave in and called Crowley or Crowley decided to call him. He drank far too much tea and went to the bakery one day for a scone and some conversation with Anathema (who noticed Crowley’s absence and made a point of teasing Ezra about how quickly he blushed whenever she mentioned his beau’s name), but mostly he just kept himself busy with mundane tasks and tried not to miss Crowley too terribly.

At around noon on Thursday, the bell above the front door jingled to announce the arrival of a customer. Sighing, Ezra poked his head out from the back room and called “I’ll be with you in a moment,” quickly becoming puzzled at the sight of a perfectly empty shop. Perhaps the person had already gone to look at the books, which was concerning because Ezra usually did his best to discourage any potential buyers before they got even that far. After he’d tucked a torn and coverless book back into a drawer in his desk - he fully intended to fix it after he’d gotten rid of the imbecile who’d seen fit to enter his (very much open and entirely functional, but that was neither here nor there) bookshop - he emerged from the room and straightened his bowtie, doing another quick scan to locate the intruder.

“Hello?” Ezra called, beginning to wander between the shelves.

The only indication that someone else was in the shop with him was a quick movement of air behind him, and then a pair of thin, strong arms slipped around his waist, and his nose was filled with the smell of cinnamon.

“Hi,” Crowley drawled, burying his nose in the side of Ezra’s neck, nuzzling it gently. Ezra did his best to stifle a shiver and failed miserably. He sighed, leaning back slightly to rest against Crowley’s chest, and neither of them moved for several long moments. Eventually, though, the corner of Crowley’s sunglasses started to pinch the skin behind Ezra’s ear, so he turned around. He took care not to extract himself from the hold that Crowley had on his waist, so Crowley’s hands simply shifted to rest on Ezra’s hips, and Ezra grinned at him.

“When did you get back?”

Crowley pointed to a small black duffel bag resting behind a teetering tower of books. He hadn’t even gone home, and Ezra’s stomach flipped when he said “Now.”

It took less than no time for Ezra to flip the sign on the door from _Open_ to _Closed_ , and he and Crowley walked hand-in-hand to Mayfair. They didn’t talk much, favoring quiet looks and easy smiles and the feel of their (mildly sweaty) palms pressed together. Ezra’s heart refused to beat at a normal pace, but he found that he didn’t mind at all.

Unfortunately, Ezra didn’t think about the fact that he hadn’t been to Crowley’s flat since the night of _The Silence of the Lambs_ and the panic-inducing kiss until he was watching Crowley slide the key into the lock. His blood seemed to freeze in his veins, and he couldn’t seem to move at all when the door swung open.

Because Crowley was both observant and exceptionally clever, he put two and two together right away and leaned against the doorframe, jamming his hands into the too-small front pockets of his jeans. “You don’t have to come in,” he said gently. “I just have to drop my bag, and then we can go for an early lunch or a cup of tea.”

A few months ago, Ezra might have accepted that offer with a sharp nod and a word of thanks. A few months ago, he would never have considered going back to a place that reminded him in any way of Gabriel or any Gabriel-associated trauma. A few months ago, he very well might have taken off running and never looked back. But now, standing in the hallway in front of a place that he’d last left in a blur of panic and fear, Ezra felt strangely at ease. This had absolutely everything to do with the dark-haired man smiling softly at him from the doorway, the man who was making Ezra’s insides twist themselves into heart shapes and his brain forget to be afraid.

So, with his fears mostly assuaged by Crowley’s few simple words of understanding, Ezra made an attempt at a courageous smile and stepped through the door into the flat.

It was just as he’d remembered it. Nothing was out of place, and there was a faint smell of disinfectant mixed with air freshener. The star-themed art still hung on the walls, and the flat was still devoid of every color except black, white, grey, and green (from the plants near the window). The sight of Crowley’s white leather sofa caused a small wave of nausea to rise up in Ezra’s throat, but he managed to keep it in check by turning to look at Crowley, who was closing the door and generally looking very apprehensive.

“Erm,” Crowley said after a moment. “Are you alright, then?”

“I am.” To Ezra’s great surprise, he found that this wasn’t actually a lie. “If it’s alright with you, I think I’d like to make some tea. Can I…” He flapped his hand in the direction of the kitchen, and Crowley nodded enthusiastically before leaving the room in a few smooth steps, duffel in hand.

Ezra rummaged through Crowley’s cabinets until he found some tea and a half-full bowl of sugar, putting the kettle on to boil and pulling two mugs out of one of the cupboards. He took out a lemon and a small carton of milk from the fridge and braced himself against the marble counter. Before the kettle boiled, Crowley walked back into the kitchen and sat himself down at one of the barstools, watching Ezra warily from behind his dark glasses.

As he cut the lemon into wedges, Ezra sighed. “Anthony, my dear, could you please take off your glasses when we’re alone? I like to see your eyes, as you well know by now.” Crowley had the good sense to look slightly guilty, and he held his shades out to Ezra.

“You hold onto them. That way I won’t be tempted to-” he gestured to his face, expression closer to a grimace than a smile, “-y’know, cover things up.”

“Thank you, darling.” Ezra reached over and patted Crowley’s hand, holding it for a moment longer than necessary and giving Crowley what he hoped was a reassuring smile. Then the kettle whistled and broke the solemn intimacy of the moment, and Ezra bustled around the kitchen under Crowley’s admiring gaze until he finally produced two very different but still perfect cups of tea. They settled onto the couch to drink them, occasionally casting winks and smiles at each over the rims of their mugs.

Something about sitting in the same place he’d been sitting when Crowley first kissed him made an unanswered question come floating to the front of Ezra’s mind, and because he was Ezra, he resolved himself to ask.

“Dearest,” he began, taking a slow sip of his tea. “Might I ask you a question?”

There was a grunt and a nod from Crowley’s side of the sofa, and Ezra took a deep breath.

“I haven’t asked this before because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer, but now I think I do.” He paused as Crowley’s heterochromatic eyes met his, one dark eyebrow arched in curiosity. “When you kissed me here all those weeks ago… why did you?”

Crowley’s eyes changed almost imperceptibly. They had been wide with curiosity, but their colors darkened ever so slightly, and they became wide with fear.

“You’re sure you want to go through this right now?”

Ezra’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Is it a long explanation?”

“Not really.” Seconds of silence ticked by, but Crowley never dropped his gaze from Ezra’s.

“Tell me, then. I just… I want to know.”

_Tick, tick, tick._

Then, “It was what you said, that thing about Hannibal Lecter and the wine. It was ridiculous, you know? You spent half of that movie with your hand over your eyes so you wouldn’t have to see the blood, and when we finished it, you not only _liked_ the movie, but your only qualm was the wine that a serial killer chose to pair with human liver.”

“I… I don’t understand. Why did you-” He was cut off before he could finish the question.

“Because you were sitting there looking all excited, joking about _my favorite line in the movie_ , and your curls were messed up from leaning on my shoulder and your bowtie was stupid, and I just… you looked perfect and were perfect and I really wanted to kiss you, so I did.”

Ezra was very abruptly overcome with the exact sensation that Crowley had just described, but he had the self-restraint to hold himself back. So, because his face had gone red and his vision had gone a little dark around the edges, he said, “Oh.”

“Yeah.” There was a strange level of defiance in Crowley’s smooth voice, and he was staring at Ezra as if daring him to challenge the story (which Ezra had no inclination to do).

Slower than dripping honey, Ezra stretched out a hand and rested it against Crowley’s sharp cheekbone. “Anthony,” he managed to choke out. “I’ve wanted to kiss you a hundred times in the past few weeks, but I’ve stopped myself because I wasn’t ready.”

“No rush.” Another wave of kiss-him-you-daft-romance-starved-idiot washed over Ezra, and he blushed a shade darker.

“Quiet, please. I’m trying to say something.” Crowley didn’t do anything in response, just let Ezra cup the side of his face, his small shallow breaths puffing out across Ezra’s forearm. “I haven’t kissed you because I wanted to be sure that when I did, I wouldn’t be afraid. I didn’t want to kiss you again and then panic - it wouldn’t have been fair to you, you understand - but I wasn’t quite sure what I was waiting for. I thought… well, some part of me thought I might never get there.”

When Crowley spoke, his voice was shaky and high, like a frightened child’s. “What the bleeding fuck are you talking about, Ezra?”

 _Tick, tick, tick, tick._ Beats of silence, beats of nothing, beats of not-breathing not-speaking not-knowing, and then Ezra worked up the courage to say what he meant.

“Apparently, all I was waiting for was an explanation. I’m used to being kissed as a precursor to… _more_ , and I thought that was what you were doing. I didn’t know, then, how perfectly lovely you are, and you scared me. But I know who you are now. I know you won’t push me to do things I’m not comfortable with-” and boy, was that a loaded statement given what Crowley didn’t know about Ezra yet “-and your reason for kissing me is exactly one I’ve never heard before. I’ve never been told that someone wanted to kiss me because of the stupid things I say or the way I look, and you just… you’re wonderful, Anthony. _Wonderful_.”

The expression on Crowley’s face was indecipherable, but his jaw dropped open a little as he sucked in a breath. “Ezra, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on, because you’re saying really fucking nice things and I’m going to kiss you if you don’t stop.”

“Funny you should mention that,” Ezra said, voice and hands shaking in tandem. “I was wondering if you might mind terribly if I were to kiss you now.”

Ezra took the firm press of Crowley’s lips against his to mean that Crowley didn’t mind _at all_ , which was coincidentally what Crowley had intended it to mean. And _oh_ , Ezra’s memories of the previous kiss had been so tinged by anxiety and grief that he had forgotten what it was like to kiss Crowley, which he thought was a crime. As Crowley pulled away, leaving the kiss short and close-mouthed, Ezra swore to himself that he would never forget again, and that if he did, he’d just have to kiss Crowley again to remember.

Crowley sounded like he’d lost his voice when he spoke again. “You’ve got no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

“How long?”

Crowley shrugged, smirking. “Dunno. Maybe since your stupid bike hit my beautiful car.”

“Liar,” Ezra laughed. “And _your_ car _hit_ my bike, thank you very much.”

“No,” Crowley said, leaning in and pecking Ezra quicky on the lips again. “Sorry. No impulse control anymore, you’ve taken it all away.” Another kiss (slightly longer this time, but still impossibly chaste), two grins pressed up against each other, Crowley’s hands on Ezra’s knees, Ezra’s hand winding into the dark strands of Crowley’s hair.

It was a dream, kissing Crowley. A wonderful dream that Ezra never wanted to wake up from, but one he knew he had to. In the back of his mind, a small voice that sounded suspiciously like Anathema’s reminded him of a large pink elephant wearing a collar labeled _No Sex_ , and so Ezra gently pulled his mouth away from Crowley’s and took his hand from Crowley’s hair, resting both hands lightly over the thinner ones that had taken up semi-permanent residence on his legs.

“Something wrong?”

“I… don’t know why I feel like now is the time to talk about this, but I suppose it must be. There’s something you should know, but I’m worried that I’m going to lose you over it, and I hate that my brain won’t just let me kiss you without saying it.” Ezra knew he was doing something that was less like talking and more like word-vomiting, but he couldn't make himself stop. He desperately wanted two very contradictory things: to keep kissing Crowley and live for a while in the blissful phase where sex wasn't yet a consideration, and to tell Crowley the truth and get it all out in the open. His mouth had decided that he was going to do the latter. 

Crowley’s eyebrows shot midway up his forehead. “Er, alright then.” He made to pull his hands back, but Ezra tightened his grip on them. They were an anchor of sorts, something to keep him grounded unless this went pear-shaped. “Before you launch into some grand - and I expect exceedingly well thought out - speech, let me ask something?”

“Of course.” The pink elephant glared at Ezra, but he ignored it.

“Are you married?”

Ezra’s mouth flopped open. “What? No.”

“Are you a murderer?”

“No, of course not!”

“Are you planning to commit a felony or something?” A tiny smirk made the corners of Crowley’s mouth twitch, and Ezra sighed.

“ _Really_ , Anthony.”

Crowley laughed and squeezed Ezra’s lower thigh. “It would seem that whatever you have to tell me isn’t going to make me leave you, so go ahead.”

That, Ezra mused, was an extremely low bar, but he felt relieved anyway. He fidgeted a little, itching to straighten his bowtie and push his glasses up his nose, which he couldn’t do without letting go of Crowley’s hands.

“I know I’ve told you that I want to go slow, and I think I should maybe amend that statement a little. I… well, with the physical stuff, you see- oh, bugger, I don’t know how to say this.” One of the hands under his flipped over, and Crowley’s delicate fingers wove through the gaps in his. Ezra was holding his breath, so the revelation of his biggest secret came out all in one jumbled mass. “Look, I know this makes me broken, possibly irreparably so, but I don’t want to have sex. Ever. I don’t go in for it at all - there’s a word, it’s asexual, I just usually don’t u-”

A sharp intake of breath from the man on the other side of the sofa made Ezra pause, and when he looked up from his lap, Crowley was smiling.

“Ezra,” Crowley said, stifling what sounded like a giddy giggle, “do you believe in soul mates?”

Nowhere in Ezra’s imagination had he imagined that Crowley would react like _that_ , so he wondered if he’d said any of his confession out loud. “ _What_?”

“Soul mates,” repeated Crowley, still grinning. “D’you believe in them?”

“Not really.” There weren’t enough adverbs in the entire English language that could have been added to the word confused to make it strong enough for the way Ezra was feeling.

Crowley laughed, then, one of his real laughs. “I didn’t think I did, either, until right now.”

“Anthony, my dearest darling, what are you going on about?”

“I don’t want to have sex with you, either, Ezra. I don’t want to have sex with anyone. I've done it, in the past, because most of my previous relationships have been with sexual people, but I’m a grey sort of bloke. Sex is just not really a thing I need, or even really want. I suppose that puts me in the ‘asexual’ box as well, doesn’t it?”

Ezra felt very dizzy and struggled to comprehend what he’d just heard. “I think it does.”

Another joyful laugh bubbled out of Crowley, but it ended in a very unnatural manner. Crowley’s eyes darkened. “Wait, hold on. You said it makes you broken- who told- _oh, I am going to_ kill _that man_.”

Ezra had thought, apparently quite wrongly, that he couldn’t love or be in love with Crowley more than he already was. In the preceding twenty seconds, Crowley had taken a sledgehammer to that idea. So, really, there was nothing for Ezra to do but tear his hands away from Crowley’s, grab his beautiful partner by those pretty pinked-up ears, and smash their lips together in a very indelicate (but, in his opinion, extremely romantic and entirely appropriate) kiss.

“You,” Ezra panted when they broke apart a few seconds later, “are the most wonderful creature God ever thought to create.”

“Can’t be.” Crowley nuzzled Ezra’s cheek with his nose. “You’ve already got that covered.” It appeared that a kiss did wonders for Crowley’s vengefully-murderous thoughts toward Gabriel.

Time had seemed to hit a stopping point for a moment, but it picked back up again as they sat on the sofa, looking at each other and laughing at their luck. It wasn’t that either of them was opposed to relationships with sexual people; they’d obviously both done it before. Mostly, it was that they didn’t have to explain themselves to each other, and that was quite literally the cherry on top of an already wonderful afternoon.

“Let’s go to dinner,” Crowley said after a while, idly stroking Ezra’s knee with his thumb. “Ever been to the Ritz?”

Ezra came dangerously close to saying something stupid, like _I love you_ , but he managed to keep his mouth shut and shook his head in the negative.

“Right, then. Shall we?”

It might have taken them a few extra minutes to get out the door because Crowley kept getting distracted by Ezra’s curls and Ezra kept remembering that kissing was a thing they were doing now, but they got there in the end (fifteen minutes past the time they’d made a reservation for, but neither of them cared much at all).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? Mess. Possibly a beautiful one - let me know what you think! Also, to all my ace readers: I love y'all and hope that you find this fic represents you well! xx


	13. Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fight is had, Anathema gets married, and Ezra says a Thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I got to write today on a very long plane ride, so this is done sooner than I'd expected! If any of y'all live in New York City: hi!! We're in the same place right now! 
> 
> On a note of gratitude: Thank you all SO much for your wonderful comments on my last chapter; I know I haven't gotten back to many of you yet, but I'm working on it, I swear! 
> 
> This chapter is mostly fluffy, so I hope you enjoy it! Also, a semi-relevant astronomy tidbit: Alpha Centauri actually IS comprised of two stars (Alpha Centauri A and B), although some people will say it's three because of Proxima Centauri... anyway, I chose to stick with the binary star thing for the sake of the reference to it in this chapter. 
> 
> I think there might be some mild language, so look out for that.

Days full of heat and sunshine faded to crisp nights and piles of leaves, and everything was, for once, exactly the way it should have been. This isn’t to say that things were perfect, because really, nothing ever actually is. A planned picnic date was rained out on not one but two separate occasions, which meant that Ezra and Crowley ended up eating sandwiches and drinking a chilled Brut in the Bentley. They drove through the country for hours afterward, listening to Queen and Elton John and The Beatles and singing along when they knew the words. Ezra revealed that he had his father’s record player tucked away in some corner of his flat, and Crowley joked that it was the only thing Ezra owned that was actually remotely on-trend.

In general, Crowley and Ezra’s dates ranged from extremely elaborate to things that could barely be classified as dates at all, like sitting together on Ezra’s new sofa while reading different books. Crowley usually wound up with his dark head resting on Ezra’s thighs, book held perpendicular to his flat stomach, while Ezra adopted a slightly more casual version of his usual sitting position by uncrossing his ankles. He usually held his own book in one hand and used the other to play with Crowley’s hair. Sometimes Crowley would come barging into the shop with the name of a new restaurant and a reservation time. He didn’t particularly see the appeal of strange and expensive cuisine, but he knew Ezra did, so it was a fairly regular occurance. Other times, Ezra would get takeaway from the local chippie or Chinese place, and they would share it at Crowley’s flat as they watched a film.

As a consequence of this, Ezra’s knowledge of classic American films expanded massively, and Crowley found that he quite enjoyed reading L.M. Montgomery (although he’d rather have resigned from his job and taken up a position in the circus than admit that to anyone, including Ezra).

But, because they were in a relationship and no relationship exists without its share of disagreements, they had a few spats now and again. Most were easily resolved with an apology and a promise to try better at communicating or being considerate of the other’s feelings, but there was one in the beginning of August that caused a momentary rift. It was, as these things often are, about family.

Ezra was an only child, and as his parents had moved to New York after he’d graduated university, he hadn’t seen them more than a few times in the past twelve or thirteen years. His mum called occasionally, and he updated her on his life - until Crowley came along, there wasn’t usually much that could be considered an update, so she was overjoyed that he’d gotten back into the dating world and was (in typical mum fashion) already hinting at wedding plans - but wasn’t overly attached to his parents knowing every facet of his personal life. Crowley’s parents, however, were the type of people who liked to dig into their children’s personal lives without asking. They were especially curious about their sons’ romantic affairs, which is what caused the fight.

Crowley had come over one evening, kicking off his boots and sprawling out on the sofa as he always did, and announced that Ezra had been invited to dinner at Crowley mansion. Ezra’s childhood had been comfortable, and his family hadn’t been poor by any definition of the word, but he wasn’t sure how to approach the sheer volume of money that the Crowleys had. So, because he was nervous and unsure of what to say, he’d said that he didn’t want to go.

This spawned lots of confused and hurt-sounding questions from Crowley, all of which Ezra answered with clipped responses and a defensive tone. Eventually, Crowley had laced up his boots, said “If you aren’t serious enough yet about me to meet my parents, Ezra, you can come out and say it. I don’t care if you’re not there yet. Fuck, I don’t even care if you never care enough; it’s not like you’re the only thing in my life that matters,” and stormed out of the bookshop.

As he’d gotten in the habit of doing, Ezra had woken up the next morning and practically run to the bakery for advice. Anathema had, in keeping with her normal behavior, called Ezra an “insensitive ass” before talking him through how to approach the subject of family money with Crowley. Ezra’d turned up on Crowley’s doorstep that evening with a dozen red roses and a decent bottle of white, an apology on his lips. They’d talked through it, and Crowley had given smile-tinged assurances that he wasn’t exactly enthused about the dinner, either. Since the situation with Bee and Luca, Crowley typically avoided going home (because his parents hadn’t had a problem with Bee’s behavior, which bothered Crowley to no end), and told Ezra that dinner was only necessary to get all of the awkwardness out of the way. Ezra had agreed, and they’d done a decent amount of kissing and cuddling that night to make up for the fight.

Dinner at Crowley mansion was, for lack of a better word, eventful. To say that Moira and Charles Crowley were disappointed by their younger son dating a used bookseller would be an understatement, and they didn’t bother to hide their feelings on the matter. However, because Ezra was Ezra, he’d been polite and charming, and they’d come around to tolerate him by the end of the evening.

On the ride home, Ezra had said, “I apologize if this is rude, my dearest heart, but I don’t like your parents very much,” which had sent Crowley into peals of laughter so aggressive that he nearly drove the Bentley into a ditch.

That dinner had happened nearly a month previously, and since then, there hadn’t been any more serious disagreements. It was late September, and Anathema and Newt were getting married in a week, which meant that Crowley was occupying both himself and Ezra with last-minute preparations for the big day.

“So, you’re walking her down the aisle, yeah?” Brow furrowed, Crowley was hunched over a guest list, color-coding things based on each guest’s role (or lack thereof) in the wedding, and Ezra sighed.

“Yes, dear.”

Crowley highlighted Ezra’s name pink and wrote an asterisk next to it. “Why’s that, again?”

“Her father died when she was a little girl, and she said I’m the next best thing.”

“Not sure that’s a compliment, babe,” said Crowley, scowling at an unfamiliar name on the - rather short, but still long enough to be annoying - list in front of him. “Don’t know if you want to be a father-figure to your best friend.”

Ezra rolled his eyes. “I’m not a father-figure, I’m just the person that she wants to have walking her down the aisle, alright?”

Crowley snickered. “Sure.”

“You’re a bully,” Ezra said, leaning over the table and tilting Crowley’s chin up so he could press their lips together. “So rude.”

“You like it.” This was accompanied by a dark-eyed wink and a smirk, and then Crowley went back to his highlighting.

Sighing, Ezra patted Crowley’s arm. “I do.”

The day of the wedding arrived, and Ezra took a taxi to the chapel early to make sure that Anathema stayed calm. She’d wanted an outdoor wedding initially, but the weather in England wasn’t always conducive to that kind of thing, so they’d changed the plan. Besides, Newt was a traditional bloke, so they’d booked a little chapel outside of the city and put up a white tent in the field next to it for the reception. Ezra _loved_ weddings, and due to his mostly solitary lifestyle for the previous few years, he had missed his chance to go to many of them. Thus, he decided to make the most of it, and he turned up to the venue in a pair of white slacks that he’d paired with a sky-blue smoking jacket.

Anathema took one look at him an snorted out a laugh. “Hiya, handsome. Nice suit.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” she said, still laughing. “It’s very you. AJ’s going to love it.”

For the life of him, Ezra couldn’t be sure if she was joking or not, so he left it alone and helped her zip up her dress. He hadn’t met Anathema’s mother before, but he liked her instantly, and they chatted about Newt and where Anathema had gotten her dress (the second-hand bridal boutique that Crowley had suggested, as it turned out) while the bride held still as one of her bridesmaids did her makeup. Anathema had been affectionately describing Ezra to her mother as “a thirty-something bloke with no dress sense” and “gayer than the entire London pride parade put together” for some years now, and Anathema’s mother could finally see that these descriptions were far more accurate than she’d imagined.

Their conversation followed the same trajectory as most of Ezra’s conversations these days: talk about something normal, get off on a tangent, talk about Crowley. Ezra was regaling Mrs. Device and the bridesmaids with the tale of how he and Crowley had met when the subject of his story waltzed through the door.

Ezra lost his breath. Crowley was dressed in all black, his suit tailored so well that it looked less like fabric on top of his body and more like an additional layer of skin, and he was smirking at Ezra from the doorway. He’d evidently bought a new pair of sunglasses, which were gold-rimmed and perched elegantly on the bridge of his nose. His dark hair was artfully tousled in a way that looked accidental (but that Ezra knew to be the product of at least an hour in front of a mirror), and his ankle-length trousers stopped just short of the tops of red leather Doc Martens.

In thirty-six years of life, Ezra had seen a lot of beautiful things. He’d traveled hundreds of miles to see rare manuscripts, spent hours walking slow circles inside of cathedrals and basilicas, and generally made a point of keeping his life full of beauty. But never before had he seen something more beautiful than the sight of Crowley’s well-dressed lithe body making its way toward him, and he wished he could live in that moment forever.

Crowley moved through the room with his typical quiet grace, stopping to kiss the top of Anathema’s heavily-hairsprayed head before coming to a stop in front of Ezra, whose mouth had involuntarily fallen slightly open.

“Hey,” he said, brushing a quick kiss across Ezra’s parted lips. “Like your jacket.”

This might have been a teasing comment, but Ezra didn’t care. “That’s convenient. I like you.”

The blush that spread across Crowley’s cheeks and tinged the very tips of his ears made him (impossibly, Ezra thought) even more lovely, so Ezra leaned in for a better kiss.

“You two are very sweet.” Anathema’s mum was watching them, her eyes slightly misty. Ezra felt a little heat flood his face, but Crowley stepped forward and shook her hand, introducing himself and asking how everyone liked the decorations. He checked the fit of Anathema’s dress - for what purpose, no one was sure; it’s not like anything could have been done about it if something was wrong - and then left to check on the caterers outside, blowing a kiss to Ezra as he went.

The second the door clicked shut behind him, Anathema’s bridesmaids dissolved into giggles. “Blimey, mate,” said one of them (Kate, maybe? Ezra couldn’t keep them all straight). “I thought you were exaggerating his good looks, but you weren’t.”

Ezra blushed again. “Yes, well, I certainly think he’s got a rather nice aesthetic look to him.”

“He’s bloody gorgeous,” Anathema said. “Wait, am I allowed to say that on my wedding day?” The room filled with laughter and stayed that way until it was time to get in position for the ceremony.

Thankfully without tripping or stumbling, Ezra did his duty and walked Anathema down the aisle to Newt. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and shook the hand of her husband-to-be before sitting down next to Crowley.

In a very real way, they resembled Crowley’s eyes, one strikingly dark and the other pale blue. If someone had lined up everyone who was present at the wedding and tried to guess which were couples, no one at all would have put Crowley and Ezra together. Strangely, though, after the initial shock of the visual contrast had worn off, it was possible to see what drew them to each other. The difference between them stopped looking like an obstacle as soon as one observed the chaste, easy intimacy of their actions. Crowley’s tan hand never stopped touching Ezra; if it wasn’t on the knee of Ezra’s trousers, it was resting on Ezra’s arm or picking lint off of Ezra’s lapel. For his part, Ezra sat at a slight angle, head constantly tilted toward his partner. They were watching the wedding, of course, but Crowley would occasionally turn his head to look at Ezra’s lips, and Ezra pulled the black silk handkerchief out of Crowley’s jacket pocket to wipe his tears instead of using the gold-colored one in his own front pocket.

After vows had been said, rings had been slid onto fingers, and the bride had been kissed, the human contents of the chapel spilled out into the tent. It eventually began to rain, but everyone was too busy dancing and dining under the white plastic cover to care.

Ezra was, unfortunately, a terrible dancer. Predictably, Crowley was his opposite in this regard; he was quite proficient in many different forms of dance and had a special love for ballroom dancing. Minutes of begging did nothing to sway Ezra’s resolution not to dance in public, so eventually (at Ezra’s suggestion), Crowley sauntered over to Mrs. Device and asked her to dance. Ezra watched them for a while, sipping champagne and nibbling on smoked salmon and cream cheese, smiling as Crowley did something with his shoulders that made his dance partner laugh. _I’ll have to take dance lessons before our wedding_ , Ezra told himself mindlessly, basking in the glow of Crowley’s grin for a moment before realizing what he’d just thought about.

He started choking on his champagne, which quickly drew the attention of the man he was having very presumptive thoughts about, and then Crowley was kneeling in front of him, stroking his back and whispering soothing words into his ear. A few scary moments passed in which he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to stop coughing, but the situation resolved quickly enough, and he waved away the people who’d come over to help.

“Are you alright?” Crowley’s forehead was wrinkled in concern, his hand still resting on the small of Ezra’s back as he led Ezra to an empty pair of seats at one of the tables.

Ezra waved a hand feebly. “Yes, darling, I’m perfectly fine.” Despite this attempt at a dismissal of concern, Crowley wouldn’t stop fussing over him, and Ezra wondered if perhaps Crowley had been a nursemaid or mother hen in another life. Finally, and only because they were attracting strange looks from the other people at their table, Ezra managed to get Crowley to relax by promising that he’d drink some water and be more careful in the future.

One of the men at their table whispered something to his wife, a redhead who turned immediately and gave Ezra a brilliant smile. “Oh, hello! You were the one who gave Anathema away, weren’t you?”

“I was,” Ezra said, returning her smile. “Ezra Fell. It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs...?”

“Harriet Dowling, doll.”

Next to Ezra, Crowley perked up. “You’re American, aren’t you?”

“Yes, in fact! Newton’s my nephew.”

“Oh, that’s lovely! So nice of you to make the trip.” Ezra began to talk with Harriet, and Crowley leaned forward to do the same with her husband. Crowley hated small talk, but he was raised in an exceedingly respectable household, so he could fake it like the best of them. After a few minutes of where-are-you-from and what’s-America-like, Crowley burst out laughing, and Ezra spun to look at him in confusion.

“That’s very good, mate,” Crowley was saying, body still shaking with the aftershocks of his outburst. Mr. Dowling was looking very pleased with himself, which prompted Harriet to ask what had happened.

Crowley slipped his hand into Ezra’s, grinning. “Thaddeus says I should have used a pickup line to get you to go on a date with me because your name is _perfect_ for one. It’s cheesy and overused, of course, but I wish I’d have thought of it anyway.”

“What’s the line?”

“You know the one! ‘Did it hurt when you _Fe_ _ll_ from heaven?’ and all that.” Another chuckle slipped past Crowley’s lips.

Ezra glared at him. “That is terrible, my dear. If you’d have said that, I’d never have considered dating you.” He sniffed and took a large gulp of water, trying to hide the fact that he thought that it actually was a bit funny.

“Good thing I didn’t think of it, then,” Crowley murmured, pressing a kiss to Ezra’s cheek. A mischievous smirk crawled over his lips, and he finished with “ _Angel_.”

Their conversation was interrupted by Anathema’s maid of honor giving a toast, and Ezra assumed that the whole thing would be forgotten. However, when Crowley dropped Ezra home at quarter to two in the morning, he did so with a kiss, a wink, and a “Goodnight, angel.”

Neither of them was entirely sure why it stuck, but it did. Soon, more than half of the time when Crowley would have called Ezra by his first name, he said “angel” instead.

The first time he said it in front of Adam, they were feeding the ducks at St. James’s. Adam stared at them for a moment before adopting a slightly evil-looking grin and pinching Crowley on the arm.

“Oi! What do you want, Antichrist?”

The grin widened. “If I’m the Antichrist ‘n Ezra’s an angel, what’re you?”

“He’s an angel, too,” Ezra said, winking at Adam and grabbing Crowley’s hand. Crowley grumbled something about not being nice enough to be an angel, but he blushed anyway, so Ezra and Adam shared a satisfied look and went back to tossing bits of ice cream cone to the ducks.

It stopped being something that Ezra noticed after a few weeks and became a thing that he noticed only noticed when it wasn’t said. When Crowley was cranky in the mornings, or if he’d had a bad day at work, or if Ezra had unknowingly done something to irritate him, there would be an angel-shaped space at the end of Crowley’s sentences. This didn’t happen often, though; most of the time it was there, and Ezra fell a little more in love with Crowley because of it.

One night, Crowley had settled himself onto Ezra’s sofa after three or four glasses of wine, body stretched across the cushions in the same way that a snake might lay on a hot rock. His sock-clad feet dangled over the armrest, and he was kicking them slowly back and forth as he listened to Ezra read out loud.

Most of the time when they read together, they each had their own things to read. However, a few times a month, Crowley would ask Ezra to read to him. As this was one of his favorite things to do, Ezra never declined the offer, and so they’d made their way through Poe’s entire collection of short stories and had started in on a book of Walt Whitman poems. Ezra was interrupted in his reading by a jaw-popping yawn from Crowley, who seemed to be making a valiant effort to keep his eyes open.

“Honestly, Anthony, you must tell me when you start falling asleep. I’d hate to think that I was keeping you up.” He slipped a ribbon between the pages of _Leaves of Grass_ , shutting it and placing it gently on the coffee table.

Crowley yawned again and arched his back like a cat. “I like listening to you read, angel.”

“You know as well as I that you need your beauty rest, my dear,” Ezra said, walking over to the couch to kiss Crowley on the forehead before turning toward his bedroom door. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” Crowley mumbled, shifting around to bury his face in the couch cushion. The new sofa he’d bought for Ezra was longer and much more comfortable than the previous one, but he still had to crunch into an uncomfortable-looking ball. Merely looking at Crowley made Ezra’s back ache, and he subconsciously rubbed at it, wincing.

The words were out of Ezra’s mouth before he could stop them. “You know, I’ve got a perfectly good half of the bed that no one’s using, dearest.” In an instant, Crowley’s curled-up spine stiffened, and the soft sounds of his breathing ceased entirely.

“What?” he asked, voice muffled by the pillow underneath his head.

Ezra gulped. “I said that I would be happy for you to come sleep in bed with me if you wanted to.” There, that was quite a bit stronger. It sounded much more authoritative than Ezra felt, but at least it was a proper invitation instead of an off-handed comment.

“I want to.” There was no hesitation, and Crowley was up from the couch and standing next to Ezra in three seconds flat, a tiny smile playing with the corners of his mouth. Ezra reached for Crowley’s hand with his, and they walked together into Ezra’s bedroom.

If they had been people who were inclined to engage in sexual activities, the evening would have probably followed a very different course of action. However, having no inclination towards sex didn’t prevent the standard awkwardness and apprehension that comes along with inviting one’s significant other into one’s personal space from settling in anyway. Crowley stood by the side of the bed, still fully dressed (he hadn’t even taken off his tie) and drumming his fingers against his legs. He was _nervous_ , and Ezra could tell, but he had no idea what to do about it.

An idea came to Ezra as he was brushing his teeth, so he called out to Crowley with his mouth full of frothy toothpaste. “Anthony, darling, there are clean shirts and pants in the middle dresser drawer. They’ll be a bit big on you, I’m afraid, but there’s no reason for you to sleep in your work clothes.” Cursing himself for not thinking of it earlier - “earlier” meaning months ago, not just minutes before - Ezra spat into the sink and rinsed his mouth, splashing water on his face in an attempt to cool the rising blush in his cheeks before he re-entered his bedroom. He’d changed into his pyjamas in the bathroom as well, so he walked into the room with an armful of dirty clothes and was greeted by the sight of Crowley’s bare chest.

Crowley startled and fell backward onto Ezra’s bed with a yelp, a plain white tee halfway over his head. “Sorry,” he said through the thin cotton, yanking it down and smoothing it out over his torso. “Didn’t know you were coming out.”

The sight of the man he loved wearing his clothes trapped Ezra’s heart in a vise, and he felt a sort of happy possessiveness he’d never known before. He knew that he’d suggested that Crowley sleep in some of his spare underthings, but it still was a new kind of wonderful to actually see it in practice. It was like Crowley had taken a permanent marker to his own forehead and written _Property of Ezra Fell_ , and Ezra couldn’t keep a (very stupid and very lovesick) smile off of his face.

“What’s with the smile?” Most of Ezra’s nervousness had melted through the cracks in the floorboards when he’d emerged from the bathroom, but the same was apparently not true for the man on his bed. Crowley was still fidgeting, playing with the hems on his borrowed pants and only meeting Ezra’s eyes for milliseconds at a time.

Carefully, moving as zookeepers do when trying not to startle a particularly skittish animal, Ezra crossed to the bed and sat down next to Crowley. “Oh, nothing,” he said, placing a hand gently on Crowley’s forearm and rubbing his thumb in soothing circles. “Just… well, just you, I suppose. You being here makes me happy.”

A very slow grin washed over Crowley’s thin lips, and then they were beaming at each other with smiles as bright as the twin suns of Alpha Centauri. “Right, yeah. You, erm, you asking me to come in here makes me happy, too.”

Ezra pulled back the covers on both sides of the bed, something he hadn’t done since Gabriel, and climbed into his side of the bed without another word. Crowley followed him, barely rustling the sheets as he lay down on his side, staring at Ezra in the dim light that filtered through the windows. He didn’t move a muscle, just watched Ezra like he was waiting for something.

It only took Ezra a few moments to figure out what Crowley was hinting at but was clearly too afraid to ask. “Anthony, would it be alright if I held you?”

Crowley had never been one to use words when non-verbal communication would suffice, so it was no great surprise when he slithered into Ezra’s open arms, winding his thin body around Ezra’s larger one. Sharp angles and clean lines molded to soft curves and rounded edges, and two bodies merged somehow into one. Sighing in relief, Ezra pressed a kiss to Crowley’s hair, shivering happily at the answering happy hum that reverberated through Crowley’s chest and echoed into his own.

After a short time, Crowley’s breathing slowed down, and the little puffs of air against Ezra’s neck became warmer and longer. Ezra, however, couldn’t seem to fall asleep. He was caught up in the unfathomable beauty and perfect intimacy of holding someone and being held by someone who was undemanding and unexpectant. He’d never had that before, and he wasn’t about to let it pass him by.

When he was certain Crowley was asleep, Ezra nuzzled his nose into the soft dark hair beneath his chin and pressed another kiss into it. Then he moved his lips down to Crowley’s ear, and he said what he’d been trying not to for so many months.

“Anthony Crowley, I _love_ you.”

Crowley didn’t stir in the slightest, so Ezra let go of the breath he’d been holding and tugged Crowley closer. When sleep finally claimed him, it didn’t dare touch the smile that rested on his lips.


	14. Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The idiots get in a stupid fight over Ezra being stupid, and then three little words are said quite a lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'm back! So, I know the word "fight" is in the summary, but this chapter is really more fluffy than angsty, I promise. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Thanks, as always, for being so kind and lovely and thoughtful! I love and appreciate every one of you. <3
> 
> I don't have time right now for a long note, but be aware of some strong language in this chapter. 
> 
> (Also, I know I said fifteen chapters. Let's call it sixteen and an epilogue? I'm gonna make that an official thing because I NEED TO BE STOPPED.)

Ezra Fell was very good at many things, but planning grand romantic gestures wasn't one of them. Ever since he’d said those three words out loud, whispering them into Crowley’s ear in the middle of the night a month before, he’d been trying to figure out how to say them when Crowley could hear. Anathema gave him some ideas, but he talked himself out of each of them for one reason or another. It was getting too cold for a picnic in the park, he didn’t have a car to take Crowley out to go stargazing, and he didn’t have the rich-family clout to get himself and Crowley a private room at an expensive restaurant.

Deep down, Ezra knew that Crowley wouldn’t care how or when he professed his love. In fact, he was more worried that it wouldn’t be a mutual feeling than anything else, but he figured that if he was going to spoil a good thing by saying something too big too soon, he might as well do it in the perfect way. So, he continued agonizing over how to do it, which meant that Crowley often caught him staring and was getting annoyed about it.

“Angel,” Crowley drawled from behind the first edition of _The Bell Jar_ that he was part of the way through reading, “you’re staring again.”

Ezra flinched. “Sorry.” He adjusted his glasses and looked down at the book that was still open on his own lap; for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it was called or what it was about. After a few minutes of pretending to read, Ezra’s gaze shifted back toward Crowley, who noticed and shut his book with a sigh.

“Okay, what the fuck has been going on with you?”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ezra sniffed, straightening his bowtie with shaking fingers.

Crowley’s mismatched eyes narrowed. “Come off it, something’s wrong.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Look, babe, you’ve been looking at me like you’re afraid that I’m about to vanish into thin air for _weeks_ now. Have I…” Crowley’s tan hands raked through his hair, ruffling it and making Ezra’s heart skip a beat, “... I don’t know, have I done something wrong?”

Ezra blanched. “ _No_ , no. Of course not.”

The little muscle on the right side of Crowley’s jaw twitched, and his knuckles whitened slightly against the armrest of the sofa. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, I’m sorry about that, but it’s really nothing.”

In a matter of a few seconds, Crowley had set his book on the coffee table and closed the distance between himself and Ezra on the couch. His nose was centimeters from Ezra’s and his eyes looked like they’d caught fire, and Ezra couldn’t stop a little shiver of fear from crawling down his spine. “It’s not nothing. Want to know how I know?”

“How?”

“You stopped calling me ‘dear’ and ‘darling’ a few weeks back. I didn’t notice it at first, but once I did, I can’t stop noticing it, because here’s the thing about you, Ezra: you call everyone ‘dear'. Everyone. I hadn’t had a single conversation with you in the whole time we’ve known each other that didn’t contain at least one of your old-fashioned endearments until the morning after that first night that I stayed over.” Crowley was breathing too quickly, and his face was turning a very unpleasant shade of oxygen-deprived red, but he kept talking. “I must have done something that night, is that it? I said something in my sleep that you didn’t want to hear, didn’t I?”

It was entirely true that Ezra had stopped addressing Crowley in his typical way since that night, but there was a reason for that. Every time Ezra thought about calling Crowley _“dear,”_ the word that registered on the back of his tongue was _“love,”_ and he didn’t want to go about such a big revelation in such an insignificant way. So, he forced himself to remove any and all endearments from his normal speech patterns when he was talking to Crowley.

This was, apparently, not the right move, because Crowley’s blazing eyes were going wider and wider with every second that Ezra stayed silent. Ezra opened his mouth, searching for an explanation that wasn’t I-love-you-but-I-don’t-know-how-to-tell-you, and closed it again when he found he couldn’t think of anything else.

Crowley scrambled back to his end of the sofa like he’d been burned, levering himself into a standing position and looking around frantically for his boots. “I should… I should probably go. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, just give me a call if or when you want to.” He’d found his boots and was lacing them up hurriedly, avoiding Ezra’s eyes as he did so.

Ezra was still frozen to his spot on the couch. His mouth had fallen open again, and he was desperate to find something to say to soothe Crowley, something that would make Crowley stay for long enough for Ezra to get his jumbled thoughts together, but his normally-intelligent brain had emptied itself of all words except _I_ and _love_ and _you_.

Crowley pulled his coat off of the hook by the door to Ezra’s flat and stumbled down the stairs, reaching into his pocket for something as he went. As soon as he’d gone, the temperature of Ezra’s sitting room seemed to drop by thirty degrees, and this startled Ezra’s body into motion. He was up from the couch and running down the stairs after Crowley before he could think about what he was doing, and he caught Crowley by the elbow a few steps from the shop’s front door.

“I’m sorry, Anthony. Please, please don’t leave.”

To Ezra’s horror, Crowley’s dark glasses were sitting on his face when he turned around. “I should give you some time to figure things out, I think. Just… just call me when you want to talk or see me, okay? Promise me you’ll call.” Crowley sounded chillingly normal, all trace of the emotion he’d shown upstairs buried deep within himself in a place even Ezra couldn’t reach.

And then the arm beneath Ezra’s hand started to pull away, and the rational side of Ezra’s mind shorted out. He’d been afraid to tell Crowley his feelings because he couldn’t stand the thought of losing Crowley, and now he was moments away from watching the love of his life walk out of his front door. In his efforts to be romantic, to do things right, he’d unintentionally given Crowley the impression that he no longer cared for him, and he couldn’t abide the thought that he’d hurt Crowley over something as silly as his inability to talk about his feelings.

So, in a burst of very un-Ezra-like aggression, he switched his grip from Crowley’s elbow to his shoulders and pushed the taller man up against the nearest bookshelf. Dimly, he registered the sound of several books hitting the ground, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Crowley had flattened his palms against the shelf, bracing himself; his glasses had gotten slightly skewed when Ezra had shoved him, and so Ezra could see confusion flicker across the corner of his dark eye.

“Oi, what the fu- _mmph_!”

Ezra had decided that Crowley was asking entirely too many questions and was frustrated by his own failure to come up with any decent answers. The only way to shut Crowley up without having to explain his feelings was to wrap one hand around the back of his neck while pulling off those infernal sunglasses with the other, and then pull Crowley’s face down to kissing height.

Crowley’s reaction happened in three distinct phases. First, he went so still that Ezra thought he might have died. Second, he kissed Ezra back so hard that their teeth clacked together. Third, he wrenched his mouth away and said, “Wait, _no_.”

Ezra stared at him. “I’m sor-”

“I swear to someone, don’t finish that word. I will lose it completely if you apologize one more time, okay?” Not sure what else he could do, Ezra nodded, wiping his mouth in a way he hoped was discreet (it wasn’t). “You can’t just kiss me and think that everything is going to be fine. I want you to kiss me, but I only want that if you actually want to do it and aren’t just giving some half-assed attempt to stop me from walking out the door.”

“I want to kiss you.”

An arched eyebrow. “Do you? Really?”

Ezra was frustrated, so he grabbed Crowley by the tie and yanked him down to eye level. “Yes, Anthony. I really do. Really _truly_. Have I been depriving you of affection at all over the past few weeks?”

Crowley appeared to be considering this, the fire that had been burning in his eyes slowing to the point of glowing embers. “No, I guess not.”

“See?” Gently, Ezra brushed a stray lock of dark hair back into place on top of Crowley’s head. “Nothing to worry about.”

Just like that, embers rose back into flames. “No, you don’t get to do that.”

“Do what, dear?” The last word was a little choked-off, but Ezra managed it.

Little flames exploded into a full-on forest fire, and Crowley’s upper lip curled into a sneer. “Don’t _do_ that! Don’t act like you can just do what I say I want and make me forget that things have been weird for weeks. You can’t… you can’t fuck with me like that, you just can’t. You’re- you can't- _shit_ , Ezra, I thought you knew me better than that.”

Ezra felt rather like he was walking down a dark hallway lined with doors, and every time he tried to open one and get back into the light, it wouldn’t open and four other doors would seal themselves off. Now, there seemed to be only one door: a white one at the end of the hallway. Ezra knew exactly what he had to do to open it, too, and it was something simultaneously simple and horribly complicated. It could fix things, or it could lock Ezra in the dark forever, and it was also exactly the same thing that Ezra had been trying and failing to do perfectly for weeks.

Steeling himself, Ezra took a bracing breath and launched into a clumsy speech. “You’re right, Anthony, I _do_ know you better than that, and I am sorry for dismissing your feelings. Also, you’re right about something being… well, not wrong, but being _something_.”

“You don’t have to tell me right now,” Crowley interrupted, softening slightly. “I just need to know that you’re going to tell me some time, and I needed you to admit that something is 'something.'” A tiny smile crept across Crowley’s face, and Ezra resisted the urge to kiss it off.

 _You are perfectly wonderful_ , Ezra thought but didn’t yet say. _I love you._

Instead, he said “I’m going to tell you now because I’ve been trying to figure out how to do it right ever since the first night that you spent in my bed, and I haven’t been able to find any good words, so it’s going to be a mess.”

Crowley’s only response was to shrug off his coat and take Ezra’s hand, walking them both back upstairs and settling himself next to Ezra on the sofa.

“Right, good,” Ezra began. He cleared his throat, licked his lips, and coughed a little, hoping as a last-ditch effort that somehow the right words he hadn’t been able to come up with in the weeks prior would suddenly pop into his brain. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t. “My dear, I do know you. I know that you’re a right tosser in the morning until you’ve had at least one cup of coffee, and I know that you wear sunglasses because sometimes people are frightened by your eyes, and I know that you like it when I play with your hair, and I know that you have excellent taste in clothes and cars and music and all of the things that I don’t have any taste at all in. I know that you find new restaurants because you think that I’ll like them, and I know that your favorite show on telly is Golden Girls and that you don’t like fire. I know that you like to cuddle with me, and I know that your favorite flavor of ice cream is double dark chocolate. I know that you’re an excellent cook and have wonderful taste in wine.” He broke for a breath, finding that Crowley was staring slack-jawed at him, all trace of angry heat gone from his eyes. “I know that you like to watch Adam because you think you’ve missed your chance to have your own kids. I know that you’re much kinder than you give yourself credit for, and I know that the stars were your first - and possibly your only true - love. And I know that you care about me, and I know that I care about you, too.”

“Okay,” whispered Crowley. “Good to know.”

“I’m not done, darling.” Ezra’s palms were sweaty, so he wiped them on his trousers and leaned forward, cradling Crowley’s jaw and cherishing the way Crowley turned slightly into his palm. “Look, like I said downstairs, I have no idea how to say what I want to. I wanted it to be more special than this, I guess, something romantic, but I couldn’t come up with anything.”

There was a light chuckle that rumbled through Crowley’s throat, and Ezra could feel the vibrations against his thumb. “You aren’t exactly the type to pull off grand romantic gestures, Ezra.”

“I _know_ ,” Ezra sighed. “But you are, and I wanted to be able to do this right.”

“You are eventually going to tell me what this is, aren’t you?” Crowley’s teasing tone sounded a little shakier than usual - because nerves do that to a person’s voice - so Ezra figured he should probably stop scaring the poor man and get on with it.

“This is… erm, _this_ is… look, if this isn’t something you want to hear, just try to forget that I said it, alright?” A barely-perceptible nod was the only thing Ezra got by way of answer. “Good. Right, then.” One shaky breath, a quick attempt at a smile, and then “I love you.”

Crowley stared at him. “You what?”

“I love you,” Ezra said again. “Sorry if it’s not-”

“Shut up, Ezra.” Crowley was still staring (Ezra didn’t think he’d blinked at all, actually). “You… you love me.”

It wasn’t a question, really. It was a kind of statement, one filled with doubt and disbelief and an infinitely small sliver of hope, which was not exactly a rejection, so Ezra just smiled and said it again.

“I love you, Anthony.”

Very slowly, Crowley reached up and pulled Ezra’s hand away from his face. For a moment, Ezra imagined watching Crowley leave or hearing _“I don’t love you,”_ but that wasn’t what happened. What happened was a sharp inhale followed by “Again, please.”

Beaming, Ezra pressed his forehead to Crowley’s, unable to bear the lack of skin-to-skin contact, and said it again. It dawned on him that he’d said those three little words four times in the past two-ish minutes, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. This time, their faces were close enough that he could hear the breath catch in Crowley’s throat as he said it, and it was all he could do not to jump up and start dancing in relief. He’d spent months picking up on his partner’s nonverbal cues, and that little gasp was one of the things that signified happiness.

Some part of Ezra had hoped that Crowley would say it back right away, but most of him assumed that he wouldn’t. After all, Crowley was the sort of man who needed time to think about things sometimes, and he was also the sort of man who had a difficult time believing that he was a good person, so it made quite a lot of sense that something like a profession of love wouldn’t come easily or quickly to him. So, Ezra just opened his arms and let Crowley curl up in his embrace, holding him and whispering things like “I’m in love with you, you know” and “Darling, you are quite spectacularly wonderful, even when I don’t always understand you.” The little shivers and happy hums that Crowley gave in response were better than nothing, and Ezra was perfectly prepared to accept them as a nonverbal version of the words he (quite desperately, although he wouldn’t have admitted that) wanted to hear.

Nearly a quarter of an hour passed in this way. Ezra’s fingers had found their way back into Crowley’s hair at some point, and Crowley kept pressing little kisses to Ezra’s chest and neck every so often, and both of them were smiling. Eventually, Crowley uncurled his long body and stretched it out across the sofa, leaving his head in Ezra’s lap as he kicked his legs over the armrest.

“Comfortable, my love?”

Crowley made a noise that reminded Ezra of a startled mouse, and Ezra started laughing. He only stopped when he heard Crowley mumble something indecipherable under his breath.

“What was that? I didn’t quite hear you.”

“I said that I love you, too.” It was so quiet that Ezra nearly missed it again, but the important thing was that he didn’t. He actually heard it very clearly, and it nearly caused him to fall off of the couch.

“Oh,” he managed after a moment in which his vision had gone a bit blurry around the edges. “That’s… that’s good, then. Jolly good. Absolutely tickety-boo.”

The sound of Crowley’s laughter bounced around the room, and it seemed to make everything a few hundred shades brighter with every echo. “What the hell does that even mean? ‘Tickety-boo,’ honestly.” Crowley’s smooth voice was rough from disuse and laughing, and the golden star in his blue eye twinkled.

“I have no idea,” Ezra confessed, staring with open adoration at the beautiful creature lying in his lap.

Said beautiful creature suddenly pushed himself up and sealed his mouth over Ezra’s. When they broke apart, Crowley kept his face close enough that Ezra could feel Crowley’s lips brush his own with every word that Crowley said. “I’m in love with a bloody fossil.”

“You are,” Ezra whispered back with a boyish giggle. “Tough luck.”

“You’re fucking lucky that I think it’s adorable.” Ezra only got halfway through a dramatic eye roll before Crowley’s warm mouth was over his again, and he stopped worrying about a clever comeback after a few seconds of that.

Ezra fell asleep that night with an absurdly skinny astronomer wrapped around him and a book of love poetry open on his bedside table. In the morning, he made tea for himself and coffee for Crowley (he’d bought ground coffee and a machine for it after the first night that Crowley spent the night on his sofa, and it had been a fixture in his kitchen ever since), plunking a steaming mug of the bitter stuff down in front of the man who drank it. In a still-sleepy voice, Crowley said “Love you” before chugging half of the cup’s contents in one go. Ordinarily, Ezra would reprimand him about not taking the time to enjoy things, but he was too happily flustered by the casual expression of love that he forgot entirely.

When Ezra told Anathema about the whole affair a few days later, she pecked him right on the mouth and said “God, _finally_! If you two could have seen the way you looked at each other, you’d’ve done that months ago.” They’d had a pleasant conversation for a few minutes about how Anathema was getting on with married life (she was getting on very well with it, apparently), a topic that they discussed nearly every time they saw each other. So, because Anathema was bored, she that turned very quickly to asking Ezra whether or not he wanted to marry Crowley. At this, Ezra had conveniently remembered that he’d left his oven on, which was a terrible lie given that he’d never once in the past ten years flipped the switch from off position, and he’d left the bakery at a pace of a light jog. Anathema laughed at him for a good five minutes after he’d left, and consequently a few of the bakery patrons thought she’d gone a bit mad.

There was an easy explanation for Ezra’s reaction, and Anathema had known him long enough to know what it was. He’d run away without so much as a goodbye kiss on the cheek because he _did_ want to marry Crowley. When Ezra dreamed, it was often (if not usually) of Crowley in a tux, or of kissing Crowley underneath a wedding arch, or of sliding a golden band onto Crowley’s fourth finger. He knew, however, that he couldn’t ask Crowley to marry him; it was too soon, and too soon after they’d said “I love you” - although, if Ezra was being honest, he’d wanted to marry Crowley before he’d ever said those three words out loud - and Ezra was still rubbish at making grand gestures out of important moments.

So, yes, Ezra wanted to marry Crowley more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. The problem was, as problems with Ezra often are, that he was too much of a coward to think seriously about making it happen.

Fortunately for him, though, he happened to be in a relationship with a man who was notorious for style and romance, and this man also happened to be thinking along quite similar wedding-related lines.


	15. Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A clandestine meeting in a park leads to a rather unorthodox proposal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You asked, I answered. I did my best to write this as pure fluff, but I suppose there's a moment that might qualify as slightly angsty if you turn it ninety degrees and squint, so you've been warned. Anyway, I hope that you like this chapter! As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts, and I'll do my best to reply! 
> 
> I know I say this every chapter, but seriously: thank y'all so much for all of the love for me and this fic. You are each infinitely valuable, and you've made my life better, so thank you. 
> 
> heads up for language!

The ducks had left St. James’s Park for the winter, but a cold-looking man dressed in dark colors was frowning at the duck pond as if he expected them to be there. The man was sprawled out across a bench, sitting in a way that would never be described as modest, and his wave of dark hair seemed to be frozen. If there had been any passers-by at the time, they would have correctly assumed that he was waiting for someone. If any of those imaginary pedestrians had been frequent visitors to the park, they probably would have recognized him as one half of an odd pair that sat on that bench for hours, talking and eating and feeding the ducks (when said animals were there, of course). So, this nonexistent person who might have been familiar with the man would have needed to suppress their shock when a very pretty curly-haired young woman took the seat next to him.

“You’re late.” This was probably intended to sound bored, but the irritation bled through.

The woman laughed and patted her companion on the arm. “Sorry, mate. Newt couldn’t get his car to start, so I had to take the bus.”

“Could’ve called.”

“Yeah, except I left my phone at home.”

The man’s eyes were covered by dark sunglasses (which were completely unnecessary because the London sky was grey, as is par for the course in winter), but he rolled them anyway. “Of course you did.”

“Do you want to get into a row about me being late, or would you rather talk about how you and your boyfriend are both stupid idiots?”

Something that might have been shock flickered across the man’s face. “I’d prefer that we did neither, actually.”

With an exasperated sigh, the woman dropped her head into her hand. “We’re going with Option Two, then. You called me and asked me to meet you here because… why, again?”

“Because I want to propose to Ezra, but I don’t want it to be cliche.” A pause, and the sound of fingernails scraping through hair. “Also, I’m worried that he’s going to say no.”

“See? Stupid idiot.”

The man’s slightly-less-tan-than-normal forehead wrinkled. “Oi, how d’you kno-”

“Because Ezra Fell is in fucking love with your stupid idiot ass, and because every time I ask him when he’s planning to propose, he gets all nervous and refuses to answer.”

“That’s… that’s really not reassuring. What if he’s not answering because he doesn’t want to marry me?” There was a thumping sound, and the man yelped. “ _Ow_! What the hell was that for?”

“You know him, AJ. He gets all flustered and nervous and doesn’t answer questions only when someone has asked him something he’s been thinking about but doesn’t want to _admit_ that he’s been thinking about.”

Long legs crossed and uncrossed in uncertainty. Finally, “Yeah, okay. So, say I do this. When I proposed to Bee, I did all of the cliche stuff - roses, chocolate, champagne, fairy lights, and a tux with a diamond ring in a box in the inside breast pocket. I’d do that again, of course I would, but it doesn’t really seem… dunno, doesn’t seem very Ezra.”

“He’d like it anyway. He didn’t even get a proposal the last time, so as long as you get down on one knee, he’ll be over the moon.” She tossed him a small smile, which he appeared to be trying to resist returning before finally caving with one of his own.

“I know, but I just… he’s _Ezra_ , you know? He deserves the proposal of his dreams, Anathema, I can’t just half-ass this.”

“Okay, so what’re you thinking?”

An exasperated sigh slipped from the man’s lips. “Dinner first. Somewhere he likes, maybe the Ritz? And then, well, I’m not really sure. I don’t think he’d want it to be a public thing, and I don’t want it to be, either, but my flat feels weird and informal.”

“Bookshop?” asked his friend, leaning back to look at the sky.

“Not a chance in hell.”

After a few moments of silence, a mischievous grin crept across the woman’s face. “Hey, what’s on the roof of your building?”

“Nothing,” he replied, a matching smirk fastening itself to his mouth. “Yet.”

By that time, the air temperature had gone from cold to colder, and the eavesdropper-who-wasn’t-there would have decided to head home and leave the two people on the bench to their plotting. The excitement in their voices was getting exhausting, anyway.

*********

Ezra had barely raised his hand to knock on the door to Crowley’s flat when it flew open, and he found himself face-to-face with a grinning Adam Young.

“Hi! Happy birthday!” Adam grabbed Ezra’s hand and pulled him into the flat before Ezra could even begin to say hello back, shoving him toward the kitchen (which smelled deliciously of ginger and soy sauce). “Uncle AJ, Ezra’s here!”

Crowley was standing by the stove, holding a serving spoon in one hand while he wiped the other on a dishrag. He turned toward Adam and Ezra, his stoic face cracking into a wide smile. Since both of his dinner companions were used to his eyes, his sunglasses weren’t even in the room, which made Ezra’s heart pound unnecessarily hard against his ribs. With a smile still stuck on his face, Crowley moved across the floor in his impossibly silent way and pressed his mouth to Ezra’s in greeting. This lasted for about a second and a half before a small “Ew, gross!” broke them apart.

Adam was still grinning, but he mimed sticking a finger down his throat and pulled a face at Crowley, who thrust the serving spoon into Ezra’s hand and started chasing his godson around the kitchen. He finally caught him and pinned him to the cold tile, long fingers tickling Adam’s ribs until the boy cried out for mercy.

Ezra couldn’t stop himself from smiling at the picture that the two of them made, lying next to each other and laughing. Something in his chest clenched at the realization that Crowley would be an incredible father. He was so good with Adam - cracking jokes, helping with homework, playing tag, planning adventures, correcting and reprimanding when necessary - and Ezra was overcome with the burning desire to see Crowley’s fatherly instincts play out. He’d never really thought about having kids because he’d never thought it would be possible, but standing there watching the love of his life laugh with Adam, a kid became something he wanted very much.

As usual, Ezra shook his head and cleared that thought, reminding himself forcefully that he needed to think one step at a time. Considering raising a kid with Crowley was most decidedly about six or seven steps ahead of where he currently stood, so he pushed the idea to the darkest recesses of his mind and asked what was for dinner.

Two servings of lo mein and one of Adam’s homemade chocolate cupcakes later, Ezra settled onto the couch next to Crowley. Adam curled up on the other end, resting his curly head on Crowley’s shoulder and rattling off an endless list of movies that they could watch.

“... or there’s _Terminator_ , ’sa good one and it’s got robots and things, or there’s _The Dark Knight_ , or there’s _Lilo and Stitch_ -”

“Oi, Antichrist, slow your roll,” Crowley said, laughing a little. “It’s Ezra’s birthday, so we should do what he wants to do.”

What Ezra wanted to do was kiss Crowley for that, but given Adam’s earlier reaction (he was thirteen now, and cooties had become a thing in his world), he decided against it. So, he said, “Let’s watch a movie, that sounds nice.”

They settled on one of the Harry Potter movies, and Adam fell asleep halfway through it. Ezra paused the film while Crowley gingerly shifted Adam into his arms and carried him down the hall to the guest room. The silhouette of Crowley holding Adam made Ezra’s stomach tighten again, which forced him to put a mental padlock on the part of his brain that held the idea of being a father with Crowley.

After a few minutes, Crowley jumped over the back of the couch and slipped his arm around Ezra’s shoulders. “You didn’t have to watch a movie, you know. He would have done whatever you wanted.”

Ezra shrugged and buried his nose into Crowley’s t-shirt, breathing in the smell of spiced leather that had mingled with the flavors of the food he’d made. “I didn’t want anything more than to just be here, with you and Adam.”

“You sure?” Ezra couldn’t see Crowley’s face, but he knew that one of those dark eyebrows was arched in suspicion.

He sighed happily. “Yes, I’m quite sure, dear.”

“I love you,” Crowley said, crooking his neck to place a kiss in Ezra’s hair.

“And I love you.”

They were silent for a while after that, and Ezra let the calming rhythm of Crowley’s heart beating lull him into a state of near-sleep. It had been months since the first night that they’d said those words to each other, but Ezra felt like he couldn’t possibly ever be tired of hearing them. Fall had faded to winter which had melted into early spring, but the way Crowley’s smooth voice wrapped around those three short syllables still made Ezra’s veins fill with fire.

“Angel,” Crowley whispered. “Are you asleep?”

“No.” Ezra opened his eyes and looked up to see Crowley watching him, unguarded admiration painted across his sharp features. The faint blue glow from the telly was casting shadows over Crowley’s jaw and nose, and the golden star in his eye seemed to be twinkling. Not for the first time, Ezra couldn’t imagine what Crowley had seen in him that could possibly compare to what he saw in the glass every day. So, because he wanted to see Crowley blush and also simply because he loved him, Ezra said, “Do you know, darling, I think you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Instantly, Crowley’s ears turned pink and his cheeks went a very charming shade of scarlet. “Shut up.”

“I most certainly will not. You’re exquisite.”

“Seriously,” Crowley said, brushing his hand over Ezra’s arm. “Stop with that.”

Ezra sniffed. “I can say as many kind things as I’d like about you, so long as they’re true, and what I’m saying is. So, dearest, you’ll just have to handle it.”

“Fine,” smirked Crowley. “In that case, have a taste of your own medicine. I think that I should hire someone to paint you, and then we can sell it to the Louvre and have them replace the Mona Lisa with it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” In spite of himself, Ezra blushed.

“I’m not! You’re far more lovely than she is, anyway.”

Both of them were terrible at accepting compliments, so it wasn’t any great surprise when Ezra sat up and straightened his tie, coughing a little as he ran his hands through his hair and attempted not to look as embarrassingly flattered as he felt. Crowley was laughing softly at him, and he scowled.

“I’m madly in love with you,” Ezra said, trying to force a little false anger into his voice.

“Oh, I’m the same. Truly arse-over-elbow.” Crowley had made all of the emotion vanish from his voice, which made Ezra’s heart lurch. Without meaning to, he spun to face Crowley to make sure that he hadn’t done something wrong, relaxing a little when he saw the teasing smile on Crowley’s lips.

“Impossibly infatuated,” Ezra said back, grinning.

Crowley chuckled again. “I’d even go so far as to say we’re… _positively star-crossed_.”

A series of images flooded Ezra’s mind like a poorly-assembled slideshow. A pair of armillary spheres on his desk, a painting with the words _“You are starstuff,”_ the star maps hanging on the walls of Crowley’s office, the star in Crowley’s eye.

“Oh,” Ezra breathed. “Yes, I’d rather say that we are.”

They walked back to Crowley’s bedroom in silence, hands locked together, and for once Ezra fell asleep first. This was because Crowley had started tracing stars onto Ezra’s undershirt with the tip of his finger, and it was exactly the strange sort of loving touch that made Ezra completely lose track of all of the thoughts that usually kept him up at night.

When Ezra woke up, Adam was sitting at the foot of Crowley’s bed with a tray of pancakes. “Uncle AJ says we can eat breakfast in his bed today!”

“I did say that, but if you get syrup on my good sheets, I’m going to hang you from the fan by your toenails.” Crowley’s laugh flowed out of the ensuite, from which he emerged after a moment. “Good morning, angel. The Antichrist and I made you blueberry pancakes.”

Ezra raised an eyebrow. “Is there a special occasion that I’ve forgotten about?”

Inexplicably, Adam started giggling, and Crowley kicked him lightly in the shin as he stretched out next to Ezra, leaning against the headboard. “ _No_ , there’s not.” Adam giggled again but stopped at a glare from Crowley.

Luckily, Ezra was too preoccupied by the presence of his favorite breakfast food to worry too much about what his strange boyfriend and said boyfriend’s even stranger godson were going on about, so he let it drop without any further questions.

After breakfast had been eaten (during which Adam had come dangerously close to being strung up by his toenails on three or four occasions) and the dishes had been washed, Ezra grabbed his coat and boots from their place by the door and pecked Crowley lightly on the lips before turning to go. Just before he reached the door, Crowley said, “Hey, remember, we’ve got a reservation at the Ritz tonight.”

Ezra blinked at him. “Erm, right. What time?”

“Half eight, is that alright?”

“Yes, yes, of course! I’ll see you then, my dear.” When Ezra turned to hug Adam goodbye, the boy had a terrifyingly wide grin on his face, so Ezra raised an eyebrow at Crowley, who shrugged. “Goodbye, my dear boy. See you in a few weeks, yes?”

“Mmmhmm,” Adam said, still smiling like someone had stuck two fishhooks in the corners of his mouth and pulled. “See ya.”

The day was a perfectly ordinary one for Ezra and a perfectly extraordinary one for everyone else in his life. He dropped by the bakery on his way home to get a scone, only stopping for a brief chat with Anathema because he was late for opening the shop. Ezra didn’t see her sneak out the back of the bakery and get into her husband’s car - Newt had parked in the alley and was waiting for her - and even if he had, there would have been no reason for him to suspect that they were driving to a minimalist flat in Mayfair.

While Ezra was re-binding a copy of _A Tale of Two Cities_ , Crowley and his crew of misfits (comprised of Adam, Anathema, Newt, and two of his professor friends) were moving his entire collection of potted plants up to the roof of his building. In the months since he’d met Anathema at St. James’s Park, Crowley had been hard at work. He’d done quite a bit of negotiating and paid a tidy sum of money to get the owner of the building to agree to let him put a temporary garden on the roof in the middle of March, but he’d eventually gotten approval for it. So, because his agreement with the owner was that the roof would only be occupied with plants and chairs and a telescope for forty-eight hours, the whole thing had to be done rather quickly. Anathema and Adam arranged plants while Crowley and one of the professors pulled lounge chairs up the stairs, and Newt and the other professor busied themselves with hanging lamps - both the normal kind and the anti-insect kind - around the perimeter of the roof. The telescope was mostly for show, but Crowley thought that it added a certain personal touch that Ezra would appreciate, so it had a special place between the chairs and the plants.

In the late afternoon, Diedre Young arrived to pick up her son, kissing Crowley on the cheek and wishing him luck as she went. The professors departed with handshakes and hugs and well-wishes shortly thereafter, which meant that Crowley was left standing on a transformed roof with a barista and an IT consultant who were excitedly whispering about something. He handed Anathema the spare key to his flat, instructing her to bring a specific bottle of wine up to the roof at ten and then leave the key on the kitchen counter. She promised to do so, and she and her husband left without another word.

The first thing that Ezra noticed when Crowley picked him up for dinner was that Crowley looked incredibly handsome. The second thing he noticed was that Crowley looked nervous. His normally confident smile was slightly shaky, and his hands were shoved into the pockets of his charcoal grey trousers instead of hanging loosely at his sides like usual.

“You look handsome, my dear,” Ezra said, getting on the balls of his feet to kiss Crowley lightly on the cheek. He was a little concerned by Crowley’s nerves, but he thought it best to just let Crowley talk about it when he felt ready.

“So do you.” Crowley led Ezra to the Bentley, opening the door for him before walking around to the driver’s side, and drove to the Ritz in silence.

When they got there, Crowley let Ezra order the food and wine (this wasn’t unusual because Ezra knew what they both liked, and he also was better with wine pairings), and they settled into their comfortable routine of people-watching and chatting about things they’d read or studied. At the moment, the topic was a certain first-edition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s _The Song of Hiawatha_ that Ezra was looking to buy, and Crowley seemed to be content listening to Ezra ramble and taking casual sips of his wine.

“Anyway, dear,” Ezra was saying when their meal arrived. “I’d like to go over to Dublin to get it next month, and I was wondering if you’d like to come with me.”

“Sure, love to. You can take me to see that big library that you’re always going on about.”

Ezra was deeply offended on behalf of the library, its books, and everyone who cared at all about it. “It’s not ‘that big library,’ Anthony, it’s Trinity College Library. It’s considered one of the most beautiful in the entire world, and they’ve got the _Book of Kells_ on display!”

“Yes, fine, we can go see that.” They settled into their meal in companionable silence, and by dessert, Ezra had completely forgotten that Crowley had ever been nervous at all.

He was reminded of this fact when Crowley stopped the Bentley in front of his Mayfair flat instead of next to Ezra’s bookshop. When Crowley took his hands off of the steering wheel, they left behind sweaty palm prints on the leather, and Ezra’s concern returned with a vengeance.

“Would you like to come inside? I have something I’d like to show you.” The little tremor was back in Crowley’s voice, so Ezra reached over and squeezed one of those sweaty hands comfortingly.

“Of course I would, dear heart.”

With a quick smile, Crowley climbed out of the Bentley with the sort of grace that Ezra wouldn’t have been able to manage if he’d tried, popping the door for Ezra and holding out his hand to help Ezra out of the car. They ascended the stairs in silence, Crowley’s grip on Ezra’s hand tightening almost imperceptibly with every step. When they reached the floor that Crowley lived on, Crowley tugged Ezra up the next flight without so much as a passing glance at the entrance to his hallway.

Ezra figured that Crowley must have been distracted. “Anthony, darling, we’ve passed your floor.”

“I know. The thing I want to show you is on the roof.”

Briefly, Ezra considered asking what sort of interesting thing could possibly be on the roof, but then he remembered that his partner was an astronomer, so he let it go and followed Crowley up the stairs and out onto what he’d expected to be a darkened roof.

The sight that greeted him was far from dark. Lanterns bathed the roof in orange light, illuminating the dozens of potted plants that formed a ring around a pair of lounge chairs. Predictably, one of Crowley’s telescopes sat off to the side, and a bottle of wine rested on a small table between the chairs and the telescope.

Anyone who’d had half a conversation with Ezra could have attested that he was quite intelligent, but all of his brilliance deserted him in the face of the beautiful (and entirely confusing) little garden paradise on the roof of Crowley’s building. So, because he could think of nothing else to do or say, Ezra whispered “Oh,” and flung his arms around Crowley’s neck.

Ezra could feel the tense muscles in Crowley’s back unclench, and a small chuckle rumbled through Crowley’s chest. “Do you like it, then?”

“It’s _wonderful_.” This earned Ezra one of Crowley’s face-splitting grins, and Ezra clutched at Crowley’s elbow as they began to stroll around the rooftop garden. “Oh, lovely! Anthony, are these your plants?”

Crowley made an affirmative-sounding grunt and scratched the hair at the base of his neck with his free hand, not meeting Ezra’s eyes and muttering something about bloody observant boyfriends. After a few minutes of wandering - and stroking the leaves of the most beautiful plants, and looking over the edge of the building at the people walking on the street below - the pair made their way toward the set of chairs in the center of the roof.

In his typical boneless-looking way, Crowley reclined against one of the chairs and gestured for Ezra to take the other. Ezra did so carefully, not wanting to spoil the moment and finding himself very wrapped up in the way the light from the lanterns was causing gold flecks to shine in Crowley’s dark hair. They sat for a moment in silence, Crowley looking up at the stars and Ezra looking over at Crowley.

Finally, Ezra became too desperate for an explanation to refrain from asking the question that had been burning in his mind since they’d reached the roof.

“Anthony,” he began slowly. “What’s all this about?”

Crowley shrugged. “It’s because I like you - _love_ you - and thought you deserved something special. Something better than a night on my uncomfortable sofa watching a film that you don’t care about.”

“I like watching films with you, my dear,” Ezra said soothingly. He could tell something was wrong, but he wasn’t sure what it was or how to ask about it.

A low laugh filled the air. “I know, I know. This is just… something better.”

For some reason, Ezra felt the need to keep reassuring Crowley that everything was alright, that he was more than happy in their relationship, so he said, “I appreciate the gesture, love, but I really am quite content as long as I’m with you.” Even in the dark, he could make out the blush that flooded Crowley’s face, and he smiled.

“Shut up and look at the stars, angel. It’s a good night for it.”

So, for many long minutes, Ezra looked up at the night sky. He’d done this before with Crowley, of course; they’d gone out to the country one night, and Crowley had pointed out all of his favorite stars and told Ezra the stories of how each one had been named. That evening had been lovely, and it had ended with a cuddle under a blanket that made Ezra’s heart do flips when he thought about it, but it hadn’t been like this. This was different. The stars weren’t as bright here because of the light pollution, and the smell of motor oil and fried food replaced the clean scent of grass and open night air, but it felt more like home, and Ezra loved it.

A rustling noise drew Ezra’s attention away from the stars, and he turned in time to see Crowley tucking his mobile phone back into his pocket.

“You’re not looking at the stars,” Ezra teased, reaching across the gap to poke Crowley lightly in the chest. The slow smile that Ezra associated with a sublimely happy Crowley planted itself on Crowley’s thin lips.

“I am, though.” Crowley sat up, hand still in his pocket. “I’m looking at mine.”

Ezra could feel the heat rising in his cheeks, so he laughed and flapped a hand in Crowley’s direction. “That was very sweet, my dear.”

“Mmm.” There was a concentration in Crowley’s eyes that Ezra had only ever seen when Crowley was thinking intently about a theoretical astrophysics equation or trying especially hard to understand something that Ezra was saying about some obscure piece of literature. After a few heartbeats’ worth of silence, Crowley spoke again. “I had this whole big speech planned out, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was at the moment.”

“Speech about what?”

Another shrug. “Been meaning to ask you how you feel about something. I guess I’ll just say what I’m thinking because I’ve got no idea what else to talk about.”

The worry that had been covered by ecstatic joy in Ezra’s mind flared to life, and he sat up as well, swinging his legs around to face Crowley. Crowley smiled another slow smile, and then he sank down onto one knee, so close that he nearly knelt on Ezra’s toes.

The muddled mess of wires that was Ezra’s brain sorted itself out in an instant, and he stopped breathing. “What are you-”

“I love you,” Crowley said quickly, cutting Ezra off before he could finish that question. “Like I said, I had this whole romantic speech, but actually seeing you sitting here has made all of that melt away, so I’m going to do this off the cuff, alright?” Ezra couldn’t have opened his mouth if he’d wanted to, so he settled for a sharp nod. “Good. Here’s the thing about me: I don’t like talking when I don’t have to, but I always want to talk to you. If something good happens at work, I want to call you. If a student I like fails an exam, I want to call you. When something exciting happens in Adam’s life, I want to tell you about it. You have this ability to turn me, a voluntary near-mute, into someone who’d talk and keep talking until I take my last breath. But more than that, I like listening to you. I love it when you get excited about a poem or find a really old copy of a book you don’t own, and I pray to a God I don’t even think I believe in that you’ll never stop talking to me. There’s not a second of my day when I’m not with you that I don’t wish that I was. I’ve never felt that before - I’ve always been… well, I’ve been good at being alone. You make me want to stop.” He paused, breathing hard, a little flash of fear in his eyes betraying the fact that he was scared of rejection. Ezra wanted to say something to reassure him, but even though his mouth had dropped open, his tongue refused to form the words. After a moment of silence to catch his breath, Crowley continued talking. “I told you once that I know how it feels to look up at the stars because I’ve spent my life doing it. That’s true, and I never thought I’d find anything that would make me want to stop looking up long enough to focus on what’s going on here on Earth. So, I guess I got lucky, because right now I’m looking at the one thing on the planet that matters more than the stars ever could, and I’m looking up at him.”

“Anthony,” Ezra breathed, finally regaining the ability to speak.

Crowley shook his head, fumbling in his pocket for something. He pulled it out, delicate fingers shaking like leaves in a thunderstorm. “Ezra, angel, love of my whole fucking life: I’d really like to keep looking up at you forever, so… marry me. Please.” The blue box fell open on Crowley’s palm to reveal an identical set of silver rings, which were knocked to the ground when Ezra launched himself out of the chair and ended up in Crowley’s lap.

Ezra wasn’t even aware that he’d said yes until he realized he’d been saying it nonstop for thirty seconds like some sort of madman. The rush of shock and joy that had flooded his brain must have made it stop functioning for a quick moment, because he didn’t remember that he’d started to cry or that Crowley had begun to laugh, either. So, Ezra threaded his hands through Crowley’s hair and kissed him _hard_ , changing his mantra from “Yes” to “I love you” as he whispered it against Crowley’s lips.

Somewhere far up above, or down below, or all around, a God that Crowley didn’t believe in looked at them and smiled.


	16. Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after the wedding, Ezra re-lives it in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have two things to apologize for:  
> 1\. I am SO sorry that I was gone for a week without giving y'all a heads up. Truly, I thought I'd have time to write, but a friend came to visit and I just... didn't.  
> 2\. This isn't a long chapter. In truth, I struggled with it a lot - I'm not great at writing purely happy/fluffy stuff, and weddings are certainly in that category, so I wrote and deleted the first thousand words of this chapter literally seven different times until I found a way that I felt okay with. So, sorry for the short one; it's a bit asshole-ish for me to make you all wait this long for something so short, isn't it? Sorry. 
> 
> All that being said, I'm gonna let you get to the story now, but THANK YOU for all of your love and support! This is the last official chapter, but the epilogue should (hopefully, barring any apocalyptic events) be up within twenty-four hours. 
> 
> No warnings here, I don't think! Except maybe that I might have just set the record for the number of times the word "kiss" or some variation thereof is used in a few thousand words (oops).

They lay together on top of the duvet, legs intertwined and hands buried in each other’s hair. At one point, they’d been kissing, but they’d stopped a little while back and were currently whispering softly to one another. Crowley was laughing, and he pulled one of his hands out of Ezra’s white-blond curls, wrapping his whole arm around his partner’s soft middle and tugging their bodies impossibly closer together. Ezra dropped his hands as well, settling one on Crowley’s back and another on his hip, and he could feel Crowley’s mouth break into a smile against his shoulder.

Both men were wearing nothing but their pants and the identical thin bands of silver on their fingers that glinted in the soft early morning light. Two tuxedos - one a light grey and the other black - lay haphazardly over the chair near the hotel room door. White roses that had begun to dry and curl were still pinned to the lapels of both jackets, and a now-empty bottle of champagne rested in an ice bucket near the bed.

Ezra made a happy sniffing sound and pressed his lips to Crowley’s forehead. “It was a lovely little ceremony, wasn’t it?”

“Mmm,” said Crowley, voice muffled by the skin of Ezra’s neck. “Quite lovely. Good call on the cake, by the way. Meant to tell you yesterday, but we were a little busy and it was hard to get a moment alone.”

A tinkling laugh filled the air. “Yes, we were a bit busy, weren’t we?”

“Just, you know. Getting married.” Crowley pulled his head back to brush a gentle kiss over Ezra’s lips.

“Tying the knot.”

“Getting hitched.”

Ezra yawned around a smile (which shouldn’t have probably been possible, but he was not willing to stop smiling for something as silly as a yawn) and smacked his lips together, reaching up to brush a lock of dark hair out of Crowley’s eyes. “It’s early.”

“Yes, we’ve discussed this.” Crowley smirked and bent his head to press a kiss to Ezra’s chest. He’d told Ezra the night before that he was having trouble keeping his hands and lips to himself, and Ezra had told him that he was welcome to keep having that problem for as long as he wanted to. He’d apparently taken this to heart because he hadn’t stopped touching Ezra for any length of time at all since they’d gotten into bed.

“We should get some more sleep, I think.”

“But I _like_ this,” whined Crowley. “I like talking to you.”

“And I like talking to you,” Ezra whispered, kissing Crowley for a moment to make sure he got the message.

Unsurprisingly, Crowley’s resolve faltered after that, and soon his eyes were sliding shut and his breathing was slowing down, and then he was asleep. Even though Ezra had been the one to suggest getting a few more hours of rest, he couldn’t seem to shut his mind off for long enough to actually do so, so he contented himself with closing his eyes and listening to the sounds of Crowley snuffling in his sleep.

As he lay there with his eyes shut, his thoughts drifted to the wedding. It had been a small affair, with no more than thirty people present (including himself, Crowley, and the justice of the peace). They’d talked about it, and while Crowley could have invited half of the faculty at University College, they’d thought it best to keep it small and intimate. After all, the people Ezra wanted to invite extended no further than his parents, Newt and Anathema, and one of the other booksellers in town with whom he had sustained a book-based friendship for over a decade. So, Crowley had kept the number of people he invited to a minimum - he’d thought that he should invite Luca and Bee and their kids, just to be courteous, but Ezra had made it clear that some unhappy accident might befall the two if they dared to show their faces on the day, so Crowley decided against it and sent an emotionless apology to Luca instead - and his side of the wedding had consisted of twenty-ish people. Among them were Crowley’s parents, his uncle and aunt (who were actually not the nicest of people but who believed nevertheless in the adage that blood is thicker than water), Adam and his parents (and Dog, who Adam insisted had wanted to come), and a number of university professors (who brought their spouses and children).

It was a simple ceremony, really, but romantic nonetheless. Because the weather in England in October is nothing short of abysmal most of the time, Crowley had taken the liberty of dropping his family name around a few luxurious indoor venues, and they’d wound up having the wedding in one of the smaller event rooms at the Ritz. Ezra had picked out the food and the wine, and Crowley had done the rest with the help of a Ritz-affiliated wedding coordinator. Typically, the Ritz prided itself on gaudy and over-the-top celebrations, but Crowley had talked them into an elegant arrangement of flowers and white linen, and he’d surveyed everything himself beforehand to make sure it was beautiful but not too chintzy.

The actual wedding had taken no more than twenty minutes. It was late afternoon, and there were a few love-each-other-forever things read by Anathema and Crowley’s closest professor friend (some spiritual in nature, for Ezra, and some secular, for Crowley), and then vows were exchanged.

Some couples who write their own vows make them verbose and flowery, and while these vows are often beautiful, Ezra and Crowley did their best to keep it straightforward and honest.

For Ezra, that meant keeping the verbosity to a minimum: “Anthony, I think I’ve loved you for longer than even I know, and I’d like to continue loving you for as long as you’ll let me. So, I promise to love you until I die, and if there’s life after death, I’ll love you there, too. I promise to do my best to listen when you talk, and I promise to try to put your needs before mine. I can’t promise that I’ll never be angry, but I can assure you that I’ll never stay that way. As for what the future holds for us, I’m not certain of what will happen - how could I be? I didn’t see _you_ coming - but I promise to stand with you through all of it. I’ll care for you when you’re sick, and I’ll hold you when you’re sad, and I’ll probably talk your ear off about a lot of things that don’t matter. And when obstacles come, I’ll be there, and we’ll get through it together. I promise to hold your hand until the day I can’t anymore, and I promise to try to love you with a fraction of the passion with which you love me.”

For Crowley, that meant four sentences: “Ezra, I didn’t know I could love any one person as much as I love you, so I promise I’ll try and show that to you every day. I promise that I’ll remain faithful to you, and that if I have a problem, I’ll talk instead of running. I promise to be there when you need me, and I promise to try my hardest to remember birthdays and anniversaries - and I trust that you’ll still be around if I forget. Mostly, though, I promise to love you with everything, with all of me, until the day you and I become stories in the stars.”

They’d put the rings they’d already been wearing every day of the seven months since Crowley had proposed on each other’s hands, and they’d been pronounced “husband and husband,” and then they’d had their first kiss as a married couple, and everyone had clapped and cheered.

The kiss was a good one, sure, but it didn’t feel all that different from the ones Ezra had shared with Crowley since they’d started dating. At least, this was true until Crowley pulled away with a stupid-looking grin on his face and whispered, “Hello, husband,” at which point Ezra’s heart pounded so hard that he nearly broke a rib. It took him a moment before he was composed enough to say it back, but the way Crowley kissed him after _that_ was something that even the greatest romantic poets would have struggled to put into words.

At the reception, there had been excellent food (which included the delicious strawberries-and-cream flavored cake that Crowley had commented on) and expensive wine, and there had been toasts and more kisses and lots of hugs and handshakes. And then, because Ezra was a bloke with quite a bit of sentimental attachment to wedding tradition, they’d had their first dance.

About five months out from the wedding, Ezra had invited Crowley to a ballroom dancing class, and they’d gone. Ezra had been, predictably, the worst dancer their instructor had seen in five years of teaching dance, and Crowley teased him about that for 90 percent of the first class. Eventually, though, after many weeks full of much crushing of toes and wrinkling of suits (and on one notable occasion, actually falling onto his ass), Ezra became a passable dancer. He’d mastered the box step, at least, and that was really all he’d needed to do to be able to dance at his wedding.

It had been agreed that since Crowley had a superior taste in music, he’d pick the song for their first dance as a married couple and clear it with Ezra after he’d chosen. So, it was a surprise to Ezra that the piece Crowley had chosen was an instrumental one, and he’d initially questioned the lack of words.

Crowley had paused the music and turned to look Ezra in the eye, a soft smile on his lips. “I looked at literally dozens of songs with lyrics, angel, and not a single one does justice to the way I feel about you. But this one? It’s tender and beautiful, and we can make it mean whatever we like.” At that, Ezra had leaned over and kissed Crowley with such force that they both fell off of the couch, but neither of them cared.

Their first dance wasn’t flawless. In fact, the outside observer would have described it as “confusing” because Crowley’s smooth, practiced movements didn’t quite seem to match with his husband’s jerky, uncoordinated ones. However, to those who knew Ezra, it was quite a remarkable thing that he was able to manage the whole bit without tripping Crowley up or even stepping on his toes, and everyone (particularly Anathema and Adam, who’d put a wager on how many times Ezra would apologize to Crowley throughout the dance) was pretty proud of Ezra after that. For his part, Crowley just looked down at Ezra like he’d hung the moon - which, given that he thought that Ezra was just as beautiful as the stars he so adored, was not an entirely inaccurate figure of speech - and was too in love to feel disappointed in Ezra’s dancing abilities. Ezra fumbled his way along, but even he was a little too infatuated with the besotted look in Crowley’s eyes to feel too terribly about it.

The wedding had ended with more dancing (this time of the variety that did not have “must have some sort of bodily coordination” as a prerequisite, so Ezra did very well at it), more spontaneous kissing, and quite a lot of photographs taken primarily by the wedding photographer and secondarily by Ezra’s father, who’d bought a new camera just for the occasion. Eventually, it got quite late, and the wedding guests departed with hugs and handshakes and well-wishes, leaving the newlyweds to retire to their suite upstairs.

As soon as they’d come in the door, Crowley had shucked off his tuxedo jacket and unbuttoned his waistcoat, wiggling his eyebrows at Ezra in a suggestive way (that they both knew meant absolutely nothing) before sitting on the edge of the bed and popping open the complimentary bottle of champagne. They sat together for a while, talking and kissing and drinking absurdly expensive bubbly white wine out of the bottle, and as the amount of liquid in the bottle decreased, so did the amount of clothes on their bodies. Neither of them wanted to follow through on the typical wedding-night tradition, of course, but they most definitely wanted to be as close to one another as possible, so they made it happen.

Somewhere around one in the morning, there was a lull in the conversation. Crowley changed that by doing something that they hadn't done in a while, which was turn to Ezra and say "Tell me a secret, Ezra."

Ezra had laughed, at first, but he stopped when he realized that Crowley was actually waiting for an answer. So, because he was an idiot in love, he said, "I have never loved anyone as much as I love you." Crowley made his happy humming noise at that and pressed a kiss to the underside of Ezra's jaw, making Ezra shiver.

Then, "Tell me another."

"I think you'd be an excellent father, and I want us to have a child somehow, if you want."

Looking back on it, Ezra couldn't be sure why exactly he'd said that. It was their first night as a married couple, and he'd gone and blurted out something that he'd been thinking about a lot but that hadn't been explicitly discussed. When he'd brought it up before, Crowley had always said that they'd figure it out eventually. This, Ezra knew, was simply Crowley hiding his desire for fatherhood behind a mask of nonchalance because he didn't want to force something on Ezra that Ezra didn't want. Ezra, as he usually was, was too nervous and too much of a coward to actually come out and say that he'd quite like to raise a child with Crowley, thank you very much. So, Ezra had always let it drop. For some inexplicable reason, though, his brain had decided that his wedding night was the perfect time to drop an emotionally-charged bomb like that, and he'd cringed.

Rather than be upset that Ezra had never been man enough to say that kind of thing before, Crowley had lit up like a Christmas tree. "Really? You'd want to...? I didn't know if you wanted kids, I'd always figured we'd just wind up talking about it someday - and if you decide you don't want to, that's fine, I love you - but seriously? You think that- you want- oh, really, angel?"

"Really," Ezra had said, and he found that the idea of being a father was not so much a pie-in-the-sky as something that he wanted, and now that he was married, something that he could have.

When Crowley kissed him, Ezra wasn't even surprised. He just kissed back, reveling in the feeling of his husband smiling against his mouth, the way that Crowley's hands scrambled for some clothing to hold onto and settled for squeezing his shoulders when there wasn't any to find. After a few moments of this, Crowley pulled away, beaming, and nestled back into Ezra's chest. Even when he fell asleep, the smile stayed stuck on Crowley's lips, and Ezra's heart clenched with love for the man lying on his chest.

It was dark, and Crowley was snoring softly, and the whole thing reminded Ezra very strongly of the first night that Crowley had slept in his bed all those months ago. He was overcome by the urge to do again what he'd done then, so he leaned down and nuzzled the top of Crowley's head. Then, with none of the fear that had been there the first time, Ezra had whispered, "I love you, my husband."

Crowley had woken Ezra at the crack of dawn with soft kisses and whispered endearments, which is why they were both awake and talking so early. Ezra knew the reason why Crowley had woken him up, even though he also knew that his husband would never admit it: he wanted to be sure that Ezra was still there, that everything had actually happened, and that it hadn’t all been one wonderful dream.

The reason that Ezra knew that Crowley felt this way was because he was having the exact same thought now that Crowley had fallen back asleep and he was left awake to think about things. All of a sudden, it didn’t seem possible that Crowley could be _real_. It felt, just for a moment, like reality had been playing a very cruel trick on Ezra, and he had the sinking feeling that he was about to wake up in a padded room with a doctor in a white coat explaining that “these things are called delusions, Mr. Fell, and it would appear that yours are very vivid.”

And then Crowley shifted in his sleep, and his long fingers dug into Ezra’s soft hips, and Ezra knew with blissful certainty that it was real.


	17. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A series of insights into the lives of the characters who comprised this story, and a final reminder from... well, from whomever you'd like it to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. This is it, then. I can't possibly thank you all enough for the time, effort, and devotion that you've given to this fic and to me, and I can't express in words just how incredible it's been to write this story and to watch you all react to it. You all are wonderful, and I appreciate each and every one of you. 
> 
> As for this chapter, just... enjoy. The last part is something that I added after a lot of consideration because I received an incredible amount of vulnerable stories from y'all over the course of this work, and I felt like it was a good way to wrap things up. If you hate it, let me know, and I'll stick it in a note somewhere ;) 
> 
> Heads up for language (typical, I know).
> 
> Again, THANK YOU. I'll be back eventually, I promise! For now, though, all of the hugs and love. 
> 
> -Hope 
> 
> P.S. If you haven't read my other Good Omens human AU ("A Careful Kind of Something") and would like to, you can find it here: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1413478

The ducks (and frequent patrons) of St. James’s Park had become quite used to the presence of a strange family over the past four-and-a-half years. They were there every Saturday when the weather was nice - the two men were always dressed in opposite colors and accompanied by a lanky curly-haired boy and a young redheaded girl - and they mostly spent their time feeding the ducks and telling stories.

Adam had never taken a particular interest in feeding the ducks, but he’d been coming with his godfather for years, so he didn’t see much point in stopping. He amused himself instead by playing with his sort-of cousin, Emily, who was as fascinated by the dogs and plants and people as Adam himself had been as a child. The age gap between himself and Emily was fourteen years, but neither of them minded much (Adam didn’t mind because he thought of his godfather’s daughter more as a baby sister than anything else, and Emily didn’t mind because she was nearly five and was simply happy to have someone who could teach her how to pull faces and tell her things about dogs). So, as Ezra and Crowley reclined on their usual bench and Ezra tossed stale bits of muffin to an assembly of ducks, Adam was teaching Emily about some of the plants in the water.

“See? They grow very close together, so lots of nutrients - that means stuff that the fish like to eat - collect there, and the fish like to go there when they’re hungry.” Adam was studying biology at university, much to the faux-chagrin of Crowley, who’d had half a hope that his godson might pursue something in the field of astronomy. Over the course of his freshman year, Adam had gained a rather vehement passion for plants, which placated Crowley a little (and often lead to lengthy discussions about the treatment of Crowley’s houseplants, during which Ezra usually fell asleep). Adam loved telling interesting things to Emily because her small round face would light up, and she would listen like she’d never heard anything so wonderful in her life. Coincidentally, this was exactly the same way that both of her fathers looked when they were learning something new, and Adam had once joked that she must have been their biological daughter after all.

This star-struck look was exactly the expression that Emily had on her face at the moment. “Fish! I like fish,” she whispered as though it was a secret that she didn’t want the ducks to overhear for fear that she’d offend them.

“I know you do.” Adan ran his hand through her red curls and she wrapped her arms around his leg. “Your dad took me to the aquarium once, maybe we can get him to take us sometime. There’s lots of fish there.”

Her green eyes went wide. “Lots?”

“Too many to count.”

“Oi,” Crowley grumbled from the bench. “What sorts of rubbish are you telling my daughter, Antichrist?”

Ezra cleared his throat primly and poked Crowley in the shoulder. “ _Our_ daughter, dearest.”

Adam picked Emily up and put her on his hip, smirking. “Nothing, Uncle AJ. Just telling her about the aquarium because she loves fish, and I thought maybe we could all go sometime.”

“That sounds like a _lovely_ idea, my dear boy,” Ezra said, flashing a wide grin at Adam before turning wide blue eyes on his husband, who was pretending to be indifferent to the whole thing.

The facade didn’t last long, though, and Crowley slid his sunglasses down his nose to give his daughter and godson a look that toed the line between joking and scathing before saying, “Yes, fine. We’ll go next weekend.”

A little squeal of happiness escaped from the lips of the girl in Adam’s arms, and she reached down toward her dads, giggling. The look of mild annoyance vanished from Crowley’s face, and he took his daughter from Adam, setting her on his knee and bouncing her gently. She kept laughing, and Adam watched as Ezra leaned over and whispered something in Crowley’s ear. Whatever it was had apparently made Crowley quite happy, because he turned his head and pressed a quick kiss to his husband’s mouth.

“So, little one,” Crowley said, trailing his long fingers up his daughter’s ribs to make her squirm. “What should we do now?”

“Lollies,” Emily said with the sort of authority that she should not have possessed at her age. “Wanna lolly, Daddy.”

Ezra fished around in his pocket, pulling out his wallet as he got to his feet and gave his family a hand up as well. “I suppose that it is rather a good time for a treat. Come along, Adam?”

“Yeah, ‘course, Uncle Ezra.” He’d been calling Ezra that since the wedding, but it still made Ezra go faintly pink and mutter something about him being a very sweet young man, and so Adam was insistent on continuing to do it for the rest of his life.

As they walked to the Bentley (which had undergone two major changes since Emily had come to the Crowley-Fell household: it now had a car seat in the back, and its reckless owner had taken a supplemental driver’s education course and consequently drove with much more care), Adam thought about his uncles and the life that he lived with them. He was at university in the city, so he spent more time with Crowley and Ezra than he did with his parents, but somehow this wasn’t a problem. He went to dinner at their townhouse once a month, and when he could manage to join them on their family outings, he did so. If someone had told eleven-year-old Adam Young that the man his godfather had hit with a car would someday be one of the most important people in his life, Adam wouldn’t have believed them. And yet, looking over at the way Ezra walked slowly, one of his hands in Crowley’s and the other in Emily’s, Adam found it hard to imagine life without Ezra in it.

Of course, because Adam was still a slightly-sadistic sweetheart, his thoughts soon drifted to something much less soft and fluffy, and a smirk crawled across his face as he started plotting what sort of prank he’d play on Ezra come Christmas. His uncle was, after all, quite possibly the easiest person on the planet to mess about with, and Adam was not about to let one moment of that go to waste.

*********

“We’re going to Ezra’s tomorrow for tea, remember?” Anathema rolled over in bed and ran her hand over her husband’s shoulder. “You’re going to bring that old phone for Emily to play with, aren’t you?”

Newt made a noise that might have been a yes and might have been a leave-me-alone-I’m-sleeping, so Anathema shook him awake. He flopped onto his back and ran a hand over his eyes, jaw popping as he yawned. “What did you say, babe?”

She rolled her eyes and kissed his forehead. “I said, please don’t forget to bring that old flip phone for Emily to play with when we go to Ezra’s for tea tomorrow.”

“Right, got it.”

Silence settled back over the room, but Anathema broke it a few minutes later. “I know we’ve said that we’re not going to have kids - I haven’t changed my mind, I’m still with you on that - but do you think we should get a dog?”

“I’m allergic to dogs.”

“Cat, then?”

Newt sniffed. “Allergic to those, too.”

“Hamster?”

“Allergic.”

“Fish?”

“Too expensive if we want them to be the least bit impressive.”

Anathema paused, thinking. “What about a snake?”

“I… actually, wait, we could do a snake.”

“Really?” It had mostly been a joke (because Newt was and always had been the sort of man to be terrified of scary-looking animals), but Anathema wasn’t about to argue with him.

Newt shrugged before turning to face his wife and wrapping her in his arms. “Sure. Sounds fine. Although, hang on - it would be a little one, right? Not like, I dunno, a python?”

“We can get a little one.”

“Good. I wonder if Emily would like to come play with it sometime?”

Anathema sighed and laid her head against Newt’s chest. “Babe, that’s Ezra’s daughter you’re talking about. Do you honestly think for one second that he would let her anywhere near an animal like that? He’d be all ‘Goodness gracious, dear girl, put that thing away before it eats my beautiful wonderful precious child!’” Her imitation of Ezra’s voice was several octaves too high, but when one was parroting Ezra Fell (a man with enough stereotype-gay energy to power all of London for a month), raising one’s tone of voice was not an optional kind of thing.

“Yeah, Ezra would never, but AJ might,” Newt said with a very un-Newt-like smirk. They’d been married for seven years, so Anathema thought that it made a little bit of sense that some of her mischievousness had rubbed off on him.

“Oh, AJ absolutely would.”

“We should ask him.”

She smiled into his shoulder. “Yeah, let’s do that. I think Emily’d love it.”

They lay still for a moment. Anathema was listening to the soothing thumping of her husband’s heart when the vibrations of his voice rumbled through his chest. “Hey, babe, out of curiosity: why the sudden urge to get a pet now? I just… I don’t know, am I still making you happy?”

“Very,” Anathema whispered, kissing him gently for reassurance’s sake. “I just thought it might be time for something new. A change.”

“Alright, then.”

A lot had changed since Anathema and Newt had gotten married, not the least of which was their friendship with Ezra and Crowley. Now, the two couples went on double-dates as often as the Crowley-Fells could find a babysitter - Anathema had once asked them why they didn’t just have Adam do it, and it took them a full ten minutes to stop laughing - and Anathema was more than happy to take on the role of “fun aunt” in Emily’s life.

Things on the job front had changed as well. Anathema was no longer a barista at the bakery; she was co-owner, and she was in charge of developing new recipes (a decision which her uncle had agonized over and only agreed to because she’d promised not to put any funky alternative medicine in any of the food). For his part, Newt was now the executive manager at his IT support company, and he had his sights set on becoming a member of the board before long. All told, the Pulsifers had a very happy life, one which would soon be made even happier by the purchase of a small snake.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Anathema said into Newt’s hair as he fell back to sleep. “How much things change.”

Newt groaned and pulled his wife closer in the hopes of muffling her mouth against his skin. “An, I love you, but please shut up.”

Anathema rolled her eyes again, but she obliged. Not because Newt told her to, of course - she did it because she wanted to, and if Newt had wanted the same thing, then that was just convenient, wasn’t it?

*********

Gabriel Simmons was having a very bad day. He was standing in the queue at the courthouse, divorce papers burning a hole in the inside pocket of his very expensive Italian suit. He’d thought that he and Mark were perfect for each other, but after ten years of marriage, things had fallen apart in a catastrophic and irreconcilable way. Mark had called him insensitive and cruel and - worst of all - boring, and he’d said more than a few unkind things in return. The fighting had gone on for months, with both Gabriel and Mark had been losing sleep and losing faith in one another until the night that Mark decided he’d had enough and marched out into the rain.

They’d been separated for a while now, and they’d tried marriage counseling and group therapy and all the rest of it, but nothing had worked. So, it hadn’t exactly been a surprise when Mark had shown up on Gabriel’s doorstep one day, his Jaguar idling in its old spot in the driveway, and handed Gabriel a manila envelope full of papers. He’d been kind enough to mark the spaces where Gabriel needed to sign, and Gabriel had done so without complaint. He knew it was over, and there was really no point in fighting it, but that didn’t mean that he had to be happy about it.

As Gabriel stood in line, his thoughts drifted for the first time in years to a certain frumpy bookseller in Soho, someone that he had loved for a fleeting moment and then cast aside like a piece of worthless garbage. Frowning, he wondered what Ezra Fell was up to these days, and his vengeful side hoped that Ezra had wound up just as unhappy and lonely as he had.

In a townhouse in Knightsbridge, the man that Gabriel was thinking about was curling up on the sofa next to his husband and daughter, a glass of nice wine in his hand and a silver ring shining on his finger. And, as had been the case for many years now, Gabriel didn’t even cross his mind.

*********

Ezra Fell & Co. Books stood proudly on a street corner in Soho, London. It had been there for quite a bit longer than a decade, but it still looked like someone had built it centuries ago and then never bothered to fix it up. The owners of the shops surrounding it had finally given up in their quest to oust the shop’s owner, one Ezra Fell, from the neighborhood, and they’d resigned themselves to the unseemly sight of an unswept front stoop and filthy windows. It was just a part of the scenery now, really, and many of the locals had actually even become fond of it.

A few years (more like a decade, really) too late, Ezra had finally made an attempt to fit in with the Soho scene. This attempt came in the form of two flags hanging above the door: one was rainbow, and the other had stripes of black, grey, white, and purple. More people came into his shop because of the flags, which had bothered him at first, but often they just wanted to talk about shared experiences and really had no interest at all in Ezra’s books. So, he kept the flags up and found that he actually enjoyed the company of the multitudes of enthusiastic young people, and the outlandish story of how Mr. Crowley-Fell had met his husband became something of an urban myth in the area.

Sometimes, in the late afternoon after classes at University College were done, Ezra could be found playing hide-and-seek between the stacks of books with his husband and their daughter, Emily. Other times, someone would arrive at the shop looking for advice on which books to reference for a project or to verify the Bentley-bike-collision story that they’d heard, and instead of a white-haired bookseller, they’d find a handwritten sign apologizing for closing the shop before its normal hours. For the first time since the words _Ezra Fell & Co._ had been painted above the door, there was an actual _& Co._ to speak of, and no one was happier about this turn of events than Ezra Fell.

On this particular evening, it was Crowley’s turn to put Emily down, and thus Ezra was waiting patiently for Crowley to join him in their bed. He was, as usual, reading a book. This particular one was something different than his usual literary tastes; he was reading it on Crowley’s recommendation, and to his surprise, was quite enjoying it. In fact, he was so engrossed that he didn’t even realize that his husband had come into the room until a dark-haired head landed in his lap, two different colored eyes looking up at him petulantly.

“Oh, don’t be cross, dearest. I’m reading that book you told me about.”

Crowley’s eyes brightened, but he didn’t move a muscle. “Oh? And how is the history of time as recorded by Hawking, then?”

Ezra made a show of checking the cover. “It’s _A Briefer History of Time_ , darling, and I’m quite enjoying it. He was a very smart man.”

“Mmmm,” said Crowley. “You know who else is a very smart man?”

“Who?”

With an exasperated sigh, Crowley threw his hands over his head. “Me, I am. Pay attention to me.”

“But I’m reading.” Ezra would have gladly put the book down and curled up with Crowley, but his husband was evidently in a particularly needy mood, and Ezra had discovered that he was very fun to tease when he was like this.

“Then fucking _read to me_ , angel.”

Ezra sniffed, trying to hide the smile that was threatening to take over his lips. “Why should I?”

“Because if you don’t, I’m going to go sleep in Emily’s room, and you won’t have anyone to snuggle with,” Crowley growled.

Doing his best to sound inconvenienced and put-upon, Ezra picked up the book with one hand and began to read, running his other hand through Crowley’s soft waves of hair. He made it through a chapter and a half before Crowley shifted to wrap himself like ivy around Ezra’s torso, and Ezra decided that he was done teasing and settled down under the covers with his husband.

“Do you know something, my dear?” Ezra asked into the dark after a few minutes of trying to sleep.

“What?”

“I’m very glad that you hit me with your car that day.” He broke off, a little chuckle slipping past his lips. “And there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.”

Crowley nuzzled Ezra’s neck. “I wish I could have met you without hurting you, but I wouldn’t trade meeting you for anything.”

“What about… what about for an armillary sphere used by Tycho Brahe himself?” Ezra teased, stroking the skin of Crowley’s back softly with the tips of his fingers.

“Already got enough of those. Don’t need another one, no matter who used it.”

Ezra grinned, staring through the darkness in the direction of the bookshelf where he knew the bronze armillary sphere bookends were resting. “What if I told you that you could go see the stars up close? Would you trade me for that?”

“No,” Crowley replied instantly. “Why would I want to do that? I’ve already got you, and our daughter has constellations in the freckles on her face, so I can see the stars up close any time I want.”

“So, we’re enough to keep your feet on the ground, then?”

Crowley laughed, his breath warming Ezra’s chest in small puffs. “Maybe not all the time - you know that I get stuck in the stars sometimes - but at the end of the day, yeah. What I’ve got right here, with you and Em, that’s fucking magic.”

It was a strange thing, Ezra thought, that someone could keep falling deeper in love with their spouse even after years of being married, but he had the heart-clenching breath-catching experience often enough to know that it was possible to do so. This was one of those moments, and so Ezra did what he always did when he felt like his heart was threatening to break out of his chest: he pulled Crowley up and pressed their lips together, and when they pulled apart, he looked Crowley right in those mismatched eyes and whispered “I love you.”

And, as he always did, Crowley said it back.

*********

One of the things that makes people fundamentally people is the making of plans. Some people plan out their days, some people plan out their lives. Some people have perfect plans, and some people have plans for a future that’s beneath them, plans built on the resignation and despair that comes with believing they aren’t worthy of anything better.

Luckily, one of the things that makes plans fundamentally plans is their tendency to go awry, as the saying goes. So, when things inevitably go pear-shaped, or conversely, start going right again, just remember that it’s all part of another plan. An ineffable one, in fact.

As for whether or not that particular plan follows the rules of every other one… well, I suppose that’s a question better left unanswered. Ineffability and all that, you understand. 

So, as you make your plans and watch them break, know that it will be okay. Because all things in the universe, including you, are stardust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it! I love fanart, so if you have any inkling to draw something from this, please do so and put a link in the comments so that I can put it in a note to refer people to your work! Also, feel free to share this if you want; all I ask is that you give me credit!
> 
> Come say hi on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hopeinthedark1901)!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hope-inthedark) talking about my undying love for the Ineffable Husbands!
> 
> Also, if you would like to make any sort of creative work (art, podfic, whatever) based on this or any of my stories, consider this blanket permission to do so! I only ask that you would tag me in your work so that I can see it and share it! Thank you for being here, and thank you for reading. I hope you are having the best day!


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